6 ms·

you'd think this would be common knowledge given 4chan is literally an open website, but I always hear these mythologised recountings of it like it's some kind

you'd think this would be common knowledge given 4chan is literally an open website, but I always hear these mythologised recountings of it like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult. It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
"Reddit without the good manners"
HerbMcM 6y ago
Anyone admitting that they browse 4chan risks losing social cachet. Risk is too great either in an internet forum or news articles. The recent Q documentary on HBO was refreshing in that the person doing it actually knew how to explain things even if it feels like it's filler though. Then again that's someone on HBO who's been given permission to be edgy (try pausing some of the posts in the first few minutes).
Rompect 6y ago
I wish there was a mainstream site which has 4chan anonymity and fast pace + reddit thread format. Both become hardly usable with either elitism, censorship and people who think upvotes matter or an absolute cancer to follow conversations in threads.
- JeremyBanks 6y ago
  Without censorship... so you want a place with nazis? 'cause that's what happens.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    assuming this is in good faith, please take a look at this list of banned subreddits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Banned_subreddits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... though the world is probably better off without a lot of those, they are not all literal nazi subs.
    - whymauri 6y ago
      GP is probably referring to Voat, which was a Reddit alternative with less censorship that went down the gutter within a year.
    - jandrese 6y ago
      It won't be 100% Nazis. You'll also have the spammers, pedos, and assorted wingnuts. Trolls can always take over unmoderated forums because while they can drive the reasonable users out by reducing the signal to noise ratio down to a useless level, the reasonable users have no power drive them out. It's a completely imbalanced power dynamic. All forums need some sort of moderation or they will always collapse once they grow beyond a fairly modest threshold.
      - leetcrew 6y ago
        "reasonable users" is doing a lot of work here. not everyone desires the same level of discourse you do on every site they visit. /b/ has just about the bare minimum level of moderation needed to comply with US law and a lot of people seem to enjoy using it.
        jandrese 6y ago
        /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at this point, and as you note it does have some moderation. Some of the other forums on 4chan might be better examples, but even those have some moderation. Forums like /tg/ have managed to hang on alright, although their total post volume per day is quite small compared to /b/.
        leetcrew 6y ago
        > /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at this point and some people enjoy that. you don't have to go there if you aren't one of them. you're not describing some platonic ideal of an internet forum. you're just describing what you personally want out of one.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - lamp987 6y ago
    This If people's opinions arent watched, selected and filtered, we might get another third reich soon.
    - at_a_remove 6y ago
      Indeed, we need a strong regime to overlook and approve everything, on each and every commentary platform, to make sure that wrongthink does not occur, otherwise, we might have a totalitari- oops, too late. Nothing has more of a "Whoever fights monsters ..." vibe than the endless fixation on Nazis. I suppose we will have to amend the Four Horsemen of the Infoacalypse from "drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles." My vote is that we put "Nazis" in place of "terrorists," given that a well-known anti-DDoS service decided to revoke protections for Stormfront while still providing services at the time to ISIS. Yes, that ISIS, the slow-motion, lovingly filmed execution of infidels ISIS.
    - therouwboat 6y ago
      "You gotta let nazis be a little nazi, otherwise they are going to start killing people again."
    - SyzygistSix 6y ago
      Yeah... you just have to make sure the solution isn't worse than the problem. This works okay for a forum or a private club. Not so much the world at large. Because it never stops at just filtering out the Nazis.
  - mrkstu 6y ago
    Without censorship... so you want communist pinkos? Cause that's how you get communist pinkos.
- batch12 6y ago
  I built this [1] and took it down when I quickly realized I would not have the time or desire to devote to keeping it going. Edit- it had live (think chat room) but threaded comments and was anonymous (temporary, randomized identites) I haven't had the heart to completely decommission it yet so I've stood it back up so you can see what I am talking about . [1] https://blahalla.com https://blahalla.com
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    This looks pretty neat. Two suggestions: show the room list on the home page and put the about stuff somewhere else. People will figure out what the site is by seeing or interacting and the faster they can the better. Second, names could be more distinct. The fact they all begin with the prefix "user" (from what I saw) is redundant. Could you mix and match from a short-words list to create unique and memorable names? e.g. RedFoxFun.
    - batch12 6y ago
      Good ideas and both easy to implement. Thanks for the feedback
  - edrxty 6y ago
    That name is beautiful
    - batch12 6y ago
      Thank you- names are the thing I am worst at I think.
      - batch12 6y ago
        Realized later this could sound cocky. I meant it instead as a true thanks since coming up with names is hard for me and feels nice to have one appreciated.
        6y ago
- tomatotomato37 6y ago
  I'd even take an imageboard with reddit or HN moderation over the reddit-style of social media sites we have today. I'd even allow mandatory registration if the posts themselves are still anonymous to other users Anonymous posting prevents weird popularity cliches from taking over, and post linking via ID allows multiple conversations to flow much smoother than reddit's tree-structured comments. I'd also say that sequential ranking over popularity upvote would prevent as many low-effort hot takes/jokes from always being at the top of each thread, but I'm practice that doesn't really seem to play out like it should.
  - obviouslynotme 6y ago
    I think 4chan with only slight moderation would be amazing. Get rid of all porn and illegal stuff. Keep the rest. You could advertise and keep the FBI participation to a minimum.
    - punchclockhero 6y ago
      There's always been moderation for illegal content and the janitors do a good job deleting porn from the worksafe boards.
  - batch12 6y ago
    yeah that's what I was aiming for, but without the images and karma-- that's why the users were temporary. No need to whore for internet approval because it really doesn't matter.
    - cl0ne 6y ago
      https://ratwires.space https://ratwires.space Anonymous textboard written in Crystal.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
whymauri 6y ago
>like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult. It's pretty interesting, because as long as I've been conscious on the Internet it's always been posed as an 'inaccessible cult.' Probably due to all the inside jokes, I guess?
- superflit 6y ago
  The 'inaccessible cult.' is about the structure of the board. First time you go there is a Chaotic mess that feels you went back to 90's. Then in shock you start to see the subs like /pol/ then you click and bam More chaos. Threads and threads you are more lost. Then you click catalog and set order Reply-by-count. Then it does start to make sense. You read people talking in two ways. On the text and on the image attached. It is full-duplex com. In the 90's I used to read my Mainstream media + Pravda (the other side) jornal. Now I read the local MSM and 4chan (the other side ) jornal.
  - the_lonely_road 6y ago
    I made it to the site finally and but I got wrecked by step 2. Where is /pol? There is no politics section listed under Boards except "Politically Incorrect" which can't be what you mean as I was immediately hit with the full n-word and wish I had used an incognito browser... Do many HN users actually frequent this website or should I be reinstalling my OS right about now??
    - tudelo 6y ago
      It's exactly the reason people complain about anonymous image boards. But that's what it is. Even the "SFW" boards are filled with stuff that you might find distasteful or downright wrong. You are safe... don't worry. Unless you started downloading stuff from random users on 4chan. But if you did that i'm not sure we can help you!
    - lightspot21 6y ago
      yep - that's /pol/ - it stands for Politically Incorrect 4chan's indeed a cesspool, and /pol/, /b/, among some others are the worst. In fact, they're called "containment boards" for this very reason.
newacct583 6y ago
> It's just reddit for people who hate reddit. That's true on a technical level only. But culture matters. Attitudes like yours were why 4chan was such a surprise to the rest of us. The culture that we all thought was just "ironic" and "edgy" with its casual racism turned out to be... kinda actually racist when right wingers decided to weaponize xenophobia and bigotry. The groupthink of a bunch of almost-exclusively-male incels turned out to be hiding genuine misogyny once they had an enemy to point themselves at in gamergate. Culture matters. Being an "open website" just describes how it happens, not why.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mhh__ 6y ago
> It's just reddit for people who hate reddit. Isn't that hackernews
- VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
  it's also hacker news for people who hate hacker news
  - krapp 6y ago
    That would be lobste.rs
  - dariusj18 6y ago
    It's the internet for people who hate.
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  No hacker news is just reddit with a disdain for low effort jokes and a more technical/verbose focus. Most of the lame part of reddit culture is still here.
- pix64 6y ago
  > > It's just reddit for people who hate reddit. It's just reddit for people who hate
  - beaconstudios 6y ago
    Sure there is some of that, but there are people who hate on reddit too. Like reddit, there's also plenty of normal boards like origami, fitness, sports etc. It just gets associated with /pol/ which is a containment board for a reason.
weeblewobble 6y ago
I haven't been on there in a long time, but I remember it being really really hard to use, especially for newcomers. Tons of random crap, no ranking or voting system to bubble up things that are worth reading, lots of gore (and worse), inside jokes, spam. That's why people think of it as mysterious and inaccessible.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

"Reddit without the good manners"

HerbMcM 6y ago

Anyone admitting that they browse 4chan risks losing social cachet. Risk is too great either in an internet forum or news articles. The recent Q documentary on HBO was refreshing in that the person doing it actually knew how to explain things even if it feels like it's filler though. Then again that's someone on HBO who's been given permission to be edgy (try pausing some of the posts in the first few minutes).

Rompect 6y ago

I wish there was a mainstream site which has 4chan anonymity and fast pace + reddit thread format. Both become hardly usable with either elitism, censorship and people who think upvotes matter or an absolute cancer to follow conversations in threads.

JeremyBanks 6y ago
Without censorship... so you want a place with nazis? 'cause that's what happens.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  assuming this is in good faith, please take a look at this list of banned subreddits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities#Banned_subreddits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... though the world is probably better off without a lot of those, they are not all literal nazi subs.
  - whymauri 6y ago
    GP is probably referring to Voat, which was a Reddit alternative with less censorship that went down the gutter within a year.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    It won't be 100% Nazis. You'll also have the spammers, pedos, and assorted wingnuts. Trolls can always take over unmoderated forums because while they can drive the reasonable users out by reducing the signal to noise ratio down to a useless level, the reasonable users have no power drive them out. It's a completely imbalanced power dynamic. All forums need some sort of moderation or they will always collapse once they grow beyond a fairly modest threshold.
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      "reasonable users" is doing a lot of work here. not everyone desires the same level of discourse you do on every site they visit. /b/ has just about the bare minimum level of moderation needed to comply with US law and a lot of people seem to enjoy using it.
      - jandrese 6y ago
        /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at this point, and as you note it does have some moderation. Some of the other forums on 4chan might be better examples, but even those have some moderation. Forums like /tg/ have managed to hang on alright, although their total post volume per day is quite small compared to /b/.
        leetcrew 6y ago
        > /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at this point and some people enjoy that. you don't have to go there if you aren't one of them. you're not describing some platonic ideal of an internet forum. you're just describing what you personally want out of one.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- lamp987 6y ago
  This If people's opinions arent watched, selected and filtered, we might get another third reich soon.
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    Indeed, we need a strong regime to overlook and approve everything, on each and every commentary platform, to make sure that wrongthink does not occur, otherwise, we might have a totalitari- oops, too late. Nothing has more of a "Whoever fights monsters ..." vibe than the endless fixation on Nazis. I suppose we will have to amend the Four Horsemen of the Infoacalypse from "drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles." My vote is that we put "Nazis" in place of "terrorists," given that a well-known anti-DDoS service decided to revoke protections for Stormfront while still providing services at the time to ISIS. Yes, that ISIS, the slow-motion, lovingly filmed execution of infidels ISIS.
  - therouwboat 6y ago
    "You gotta let nazis be a little nazi, otherwise they are going to start killing people again."
  - SyzygistSix 6y ago
    Yeah... you just have to make sure the solution isn't worse than the problem. This works okay for a forum or a private club. Not so much the world at large. Because it never stops at just filtering out the Nazis.
- mrkstu 6y ago
  Without censorship... so you want communist pinkos? Cause that's how you get communist pinkos.
batch12 6y ago
I built this [1] and took it down when I quickly realized I would not have the time or desire to devote to keeping it going. Edit- it had live (think chat room) but threaded comments and was anonymous (temporary, randomized identites) I haven't had the heart to completely decommission it yet so I've stood it back up so you can see what I am talking about . [1] https://blahalla.com https://blahalla.com
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  This looks pretty neat. Two suggestions: show the room list on the home page and put the about stuff somewhere else. People will figure out what the site is by seeing or interacting and the faster they can the better. Second, names could be more distinct. The fact they all begin with the prefix "user" (from what I saw) is redundant. Could you mix and match from a short-words list to create unique and memorable names? e.g. RedFoxFun.
  - batch12 6y ago
    Good ideas and both easy to implement. Thanks for the feedback
- edrxty 6y ago
  That name is beautiful
  - batch12 6y ago
    Thank you- names are the thing I am worst at I think.
    - batch12 6y ago
      Realized later this could sound cocky. I meant it instead as a true thanks since coming up with names is hard for me and feels nice to have one appreciated.
      - 6y ago
tomatotomato37 6y ago
I'd even take an imageboard with reddit or HN moderation over the reddit-style of social media sites we have today. I'd even allow mandatory registration if the posts themselves are still anonymous to other users Anonymous posting prevents weird popularity cliches from taking over, and post linking via ID allows multiple conversations to flow much smoother than reddit's tree-structured comments. I'd also say that sequential ranking over popularity upvote would prevent as many low-effort hot takes/jokes from always being at the top of each thread, but I'm practice that doesn't really seem to play out like it should.
- obviouslynotme 6y ago
  I think 4chan with only slight moderation would be amazing. Get rid of all porn and illegal stuff. Keep the rest. You could advertise and keep the FBI participation to a minimum.
  - punchclockhero 6y ago
    There's always been moderation for illegal content and the janitors do a good job deleting porn from the worksafe boards.
- batch12 6y ago
  yeah that's what I was aiming for, but without the images and karma-- that's why the users were temporary. No need to whore for internet approval because it really doesn't matter.
  - cl0ne 6y ago
    https://ratwires.space https://ratwires.space Anonymous textboard written in Crystal.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

whymauri 6y ago

>like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult. It's pretty interesting, because as long as I've been conscious on the Internet it's always been posed as an 'inaccessible cult.' Probably due to all the inside jokes, I guess?

superflit 6y ago
The 'inaccessible cult.' is about the structure of the board. First time you go there is a Chaotic mess that feels you went back to 90's. Then in shock you start to see the subs like /pol/ then you click and bam More chaos. Threads and threads you are more lost. Then you click catalog and set order Reply-by-count. Then it does start to make sense. You read people talking in two ways. On the text and on the image attached. It is full-duplex com. In the 90's I used to read my Mainstream media + Pravda (the other side) jornal. Now I read the local MSM and 4chan (the other side ) jornal.
- the_lonely_road 6y ago
  I made it to the site finally and but I got wrecked by step 2. Where is /pol? There is no politics section listed under Boards except "Politically Incorrect" which can't be what you mean as I was immediately hit with the full n-word and wish I had used an incognito browser... Do many HN users actually frequent this website or should I be reinstalling my OS right about now??
  - tudelo 6y ago
    It's exactly the reason people complain about anonymous image boards. But that's what it is. Even the "SFW" boards are filled with stuff that you might find distasteful or downright wrong. You are safe... don't worry. Unless you started downloading stuff from random users on 4chan. But if you did that i'm not sure we can help you!
  - lightspot21 6y ago
    yep - that's /pol/ - it stands for Politically Incorrect 4chan's indeed a cesspool, and /pol/, /b/, among some others are the worst. In fact, they're called "containment boards" for this very reason.

newacct583 6y ago

> It's just reddit for people who hate reddit. That's true on a technical level only. But culture matters. Attitudes like yours were why 4chan was such a surprise to the rest of us. The culture that we all thought was just "ironic" and "edgy" with its casual racism turned out to be... kinda actually racist when right wingers decided to weaponize xenophobia and bigotry. The groupthink of a bunch of almost-exclusively-male incels turned out to be hiding genuine misogyny once they had an enemy to point themselves at in gamergate. Culture matters. Being an "open website" just describes how it happens, not why.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mhh__ 6y ago

> It's just reddit for people who hate reddit. Isn't that hackernews

VWWHFSfQ 6y ago
it's also hacker news for people who hate hacker news
- krapp 6y ago
  That would be lobste.rs
- dariusj18 6y ago
  It's the internet for people who hate.
beaconstudios 6y ago
No hacker news is just reddit with a disdain for low effort jokes and a more technical/verbose focus. Most of the lame part of reddit culture is still here.
pix64 6y ago
> > It's just reddit for people who hate reddit. It's just reddit for people who hate
- beaconstudios 6y ago
  Sure there is some of that, but there are people who hate on reddit too. Like reddit, there's also plenty of normal boards like origami, fitness, sports etc. It just gets associated with /pol/ which is a containment board for a reason.

weeblewobble 6y ago

I haven't been on there in a long time, but I remember it being really really hard to use, especially for newcomers. Tons of random crap, no ranking or voting system to bubble up things that are worth reading, lots of gore (and worse), inside jokes, spam. That's why people think of it as mysterious and inaccessible.