9 ms·
4chan "blacking out" (or, "spoilering") all comments as SOPA protest
- Wab 15y agoI think today can be unofficially called the doomsday. Not because SOPA won, but because everything is dark.
- runn1ng 15y agoWell, at least, I can be more productive today. ....nope, Facebook is still working.
- stfu 15y agoNever had any doubts about on which site Facebook really stands. The bigger surprise to me is the absent of Twitter on the protests. I didn't expect them to join the -Tech companies putting profit over principles- club.
- Tim-Boss 15y agoI think today can be proudly called: The Day That The Internet Stood Together In Unison. I really hope that there aren't too many more reasons that action like this will be required again within my lifetime, but extrapolating from the way things have been going over the last couple of years I seriously doubt it.
- MengYuanLong 15y agoI think one cool byproduct is the realization that we share much more in common with a group of people, not because of their home state but rather because of their core beliefs. Living abroad, this becomes all to evident when people expect you to attend functions simply because you are all from a different geographical area (read: expats).
- dkersten 15y ago4chan should stay like this.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jgeralnik 15y ago4chan is censoring /b/? About time :-)
- runn1ng 15y agoI linked /co/ on purpose - I think it's one of the more civil boards.
- srijan4 15y agoThis might be one of the very few cases when 4chan is on hn.
- atomicdog 15y agoThe other of course being that very cool sleepsort algorithm that was posted there
- jiggy2011 15y agoThat made me laugh, the post quality of 4chan may be terrible but there's obviously a few smart people about there.
- JonnieCache 15y agoTerribleness is in the eye of the beholder. I would posit that 4chan's post quality is actually extremely high. People there don't complain afaik. If you were to transfer the posts to the hep-th mailing list or something, it'd be very bad content, and vice-versa. As it stands, I imagine when people go to 4chan they tend to get exactly what they want. I would also guess that the average 'smartness' level is a lot higher than you might think.
- jiggy2011 15y agoWhenever I've visited /prog on 4chan I'll see posts with some intelligent content then about 10 replies saying "your a fag" or something then maybe a couple of other genuinely witty replies and a few intelligent ones. There are also entire threads started on seemingly legit topics that devolve into flamewars almost immediately plus a huge number of people who seem to just spam some meme everywhere regardless or relevance. I'm quite surprised that the intelligent people there put up with all the other crap. I suppose it's possible there are a lot of intelligent people with the emotional maturity of a 10 year old.
- mbowcock 15y ago
- radicalbyte 15y agoLinking directly to 4chan should be marked NSFW. It's too easy to miss the domain name at the end of the link (like me).
- thomasgerbe 15y agoThe headline mentions 4chan.
- ajarmoniuk 15y agoUnlike what most people probably think, not all boards on 4chan are NSFW and the home page is certainly SFW. 4chan is not just /b/.
- brigade 15y agoIt's way too common to find porn on the blue boards and by extension the front page.
- iamandrus 15y ago/co/ is fine for work.
- runn1ng 15y agoI linked a SFW board. (you can tell 4chan's SFW boards from NSFW by the background; the blue ones are - or, at least, should be - SFW, the yellow ones are NSFW)
- SomeOtherGuy 15y agoSo, you missed the domain, and were subject to the horrors of people discussing comics? Why exactly do we need to protect you from this terrible fate?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- feor 15y agoNot all comments. The textboards are unaffected.
- VMG 15y agoI wonder if the protest suffers if too many sites that are publicly perceived as "evil" or even "slightly evil" join the blackout. The public might start to think that these sites should be blacked out.
- Homunculiheaded 15y agoI think the real purpose of these blackouts is to get users to finally do something. As much as I oppose sopa/pipa it wasn't until the Wikipedia blackout with direct links to my congressman/senators contact forms that I actually took the time to write letters to all of them. It had been on my "yea yea I'll get to it" list for a long time. Now I'm sure there are many HNers who are deeply cynical about the value of writing to senators, but honestly you have to at least give it a shot.
- chimeracoder 15y agoI was afraid of that, but now that I think about it, it's less of an issue when the big names (Wikipedia/Google) are joining in. It makes it harder for a politician to single those websites out and spin the protests in a negative light. (Then again, anything's possible in politics and PR, so it's hard but not impossible).
- EventArgs 15y agoI will take your word for it.
- stiletto 15y agoI should have!
- atamyrat 15y agoSurf Safely! This Website is not accessible in the UAE. Oh, irony..
- brmj 15y agoThis may inspire massive overreaction, not just /b/tards calling their congresspeople. Back when AT&T blocked access to 4chan for a few hours due to a DDoS attack, some of them assumed it was censorship and started crafting plans to retaliate with fiber seeking backhoes.