4 ms·

I think that they don’t trust the maintainer. However 4chan raids like this are often run by third parties that can benefit from attributing this type of behavi

I think that they don’t trust the maintainer. However 4chan raids like this are often run by third parties that can benefit from attributing this type of behavior to “anonymous” individuals. I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who bullied this individual had the goal of getting the original independent fork abandoned while also getting the new fork cancelled on the grounds of hate speech all along. I visit 4chan and the site is full of propaganda from government and entities with enough capital to pay astroturfers or build bots. At this point it is safe to assume that “anon” is not always some edgy hacker kids but a government, bank, large company, etc.

Ygg2 5y ago
Damn, that's some sci-fi level shittery. Reminds me of something I watched - where a person created an impromptu hacker persona, to expose a corporation corruption. Then that hacker pseudonym was reused by other corporate actors to cause PR nightmares for each other.
- jolmg 5y ago
  Sounds like GitS:SAC[1] season one. Person is Aoi, created The Laughing Man, an impromptu hacker persona, to expose that micromachine corporations were hiding the fact that expensive micromachine treatments were ineffective against Cyberbrain Sclerosis and that an inexpensive vaccine called Murai existed that was effective. The Laughing Man persona was then used by various corporations to profit in various ways. Or were you thinking of something else with a similar plot? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex#Season_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alon...
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    Yeah, that's it.
pigbearpig 5y ago
So you're telling me that a bank is going on 4chan to start raids? Please, no CEO knows what a 4chan is.
- DevKoala 5y ago
  What I am saying is that I have seen a lot of evidence for organized/professional sentiment manipulation in 4chan, and there are tons of collected threads that describe how the organizations that are paid to post in 4chan work. I assume it is a professional service being sold. For example, every time I tried to make threads around this YouTube video exposing the lobbying practices of Exxon Mobile against climate change fighting measures, my thread would get derailed into racist stuff that had nothing to do with the video and would get the thread eventually locked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE
  - verve_rat 5y ago
    Or maybe... 4chan is full of racist assholes?
  - meowface 5y ago
    >my thread would get derailed into racist stuff that had nothing to do with the video Let's use Occam's razor here.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    Oh, Internet shills are real. What I personally found funny is apparently shills for Tesla cars is substituted with own lightly trained staffs and they are sort of prone to manipulation themselves. But calling out Exxon on 4chan? That’s brave.
    - DevKoala 5y ago
      Watch the video, see who is implied in the video and then you will understand why the thread kept getting nuked.
  - 5y ago
meowface 5y ago
Any anonymous website, including 4chan, is extremely easy to "game" in the way you describe, but "the site is full of propaganda from government and entities with enough capital to pay astroturfers" and saying it's safe to assume a government, bank, or large company is secretly weaponizing 4chan to raid this repository owner sounds very similar to one of the standard paranoid conspiracy theories that circulate on the site (Pizzagate, QAnon, etc.). I'm sure some shady interference from external actors does sometimes happen on the site, but in a scenario like this, I would bet a lot of money 99 - 100% of the people involved are just /g/ trolls who think it's funny to harass the guy. This "it wasn't us!" reasoning reminds me a lot of the Gamergate people who insisted anyone harassing people was actually a false flag by someone trying to make their side look bad.
- DevKoala 5y ago
  Sorry, I am not defending 4chan posters at all. I am just saying that “anon” isn’t just some random 4chan posters all the time anymore. Looking further into the sequence of events, it might as well have been just 4chan being 4chan, but like someone else said, it seems that they played themselves here. There are posters on /g/ who legitimate wanted this tool to remain usable without tracking analytics.
  - meowface 5y ago
    >There are posters on /g/ who legitimate wanted this tool to remain usable without tracking analytics. Indeed. It's perplexing why they targeted this person for doing a public service. (Not that they should harass the original project or anything, of course. But it especially makes no sense that they don't like the person who's actually on their side in the matter.)

Ygg2 5y ago

Damn, that's some sci-fi level shittery. Reminds me of something I watched - where a person created an impromptu hacker persona, to expose a corporation corruption. Then that hacker pseudonym was reused by other corporate actors to cause PR nightmares for each other.

jolmg 5y ago
Sounds like GitS:SAC[1] season one. Person is Aoi, created The Laughing Man, an impromptu hacker persona, to expose that micromachine corporations were hiding the fact that expensive micromachine treatments were ineffective against Cyberbrain Sclerosis and that an inexpensive vaccine called Murai existed that was effective. The Laughing Man persona was then used by various corporations to profit in various ways. Or were you thinking of something else with a similar plot? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alone_Complex#Season_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell:_Stand_Alon...
- Ygg2 5y ago
  Yeah, that's it.

pigbearpig 5y ago

So you're telling me that a bank is going on 4chan to start raids? Please, no CEO knows what a 4chan is.

DevKoala 5y ago
What I am saying is that I have seen a lot of evidence for organized/professional sentiment manipulation in 4chan, and there are tons of collected threads that describe how the organizations that are paid to post in 4chan work. I assume it is a professional service being sold. For example, every time I tried to make threads around this YouTube video exposing the lobbying practices of Exxon Mobile against climate change fighting measures, my thread would get derailed into racist stuff that had nothing to do with the video and would get the thread eventually locked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE
- verve_rat 5y ago
  Or maybe... 4chan is full of racist assholes?
- meowface 5y ago
  >my thread would get derailed into racist stuff that had nothing to do with the video Let's use Occam's razor here.
- numpad0 5y ago
  Oh, Internet shills are real. What I personally found funny is apparently shills for Tesla cars is substituted with own lightly trained staffs and they are sort of prone to manipulation themselves. But calling out Exxon on 4chan? That’s brave.
  - DevKoala 5y ago
    Watch the video, see who is implied in the video and then you will understand why the thread kept getting nuked.
- 5y ago

meowface 5y ago

Any anonymous website, including 4chan, is extremely easy to "game" in the way you describe, but "the site is full of propaganda from government and entities with enough capital to pay astroturfers" and saying it's safe to assume a government, bank, or large company is secretly weaponizing 4chan to raid this repository owner sounds very similar to one of the standard paranoid conspiracy theories that circulate on the site (Pizzagate, QAnon, etc.). I'm sure some shady interference from external actors does sometimes happen on the site, but in a scenario like this, I would bet a lot of money 99 - 100% of the people involved are just /g/ trolls who think it's funny to harass the guy. This "it wasn't us!" reasoning reminds me a lot of the Gamergate people who insisted anyone harassing people was actually a false flag by someone trying to make their side look bad.

DevKoala 5y ago
Sorry, I am not defending 4chan posters at all. I am just saying that “anon” isn’t just some random 4chan posters all the time anymore. Looking further into the sequence of events, it might as well have been just 4chan being 4chan, but like someone else said, it seems that they played themselves here. There are posters on /g/ who legitimate wanted this tool to remain usable without tracking analytics.
- meowface 5y ago
  >There are posters on /g/ who legitimate wanted this tool to remain usable without tracking analytics. Indeed. It's perplexing why they targeted this person for doing a public service. (Not that they should harass the original project or anything, of course. But it especially makes no sense that they don't like the person who's actually on their side in the matter.)