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I think the accusation that 4chan is a far-right message board is accurate, and I believe that accusation can be supported by showing that 4chan's explicitly st
by beebmam 4y ago
I think the accusation that 4chan is a far-right message board is accurate, and I believe that accusation can be supported by showing that 4chan's explicitly stated rules can be used to plausibly deny this accusation, while demonstrating that they're are not enforced (or selectively enforced).
4chan's Rule 3: "You will not post any of the following outside of /b/: Troll posts, Racism, Anthropomorphic ("furry") pornography, Grotesque ("guro") images..."
These rules are constantly being violated across many of the boards, and moderators rarely take action on some of the boards when posts are reported unless they explicitly violate US law. I've seen so many threads get to 400+ replies and fall off the boards, threads that blatantly violate these rules. The period of time after the 2020 election was brutal, an enormous amount of violent and racist content was not removed.
Rules are often even selectively enforced, sculpting narratives that moderator cliques decide on (see /pol/ for example).
At some point, it's worthwhile to ask "who benefits?" from these rules not being enforced. The kind of content that doesn't get moderated is strictly far-right stuff.
- tr1ggered 4y ago[flagged]
- andrewclunn 4y agoAnthropomorphic furry porn is right wing now? I think there are some people for whom "offensive to me," "offensive to others, and "right wing" are equivalent terms. All your post does is prove that you fall into that category. Live Leak death videos and racist jokes are no more "right wing" than pedophilia is "left wing" (which is to say that it isn't). Now some people break down racism in some weird way where bigotry towards Africans or Hispanics is "right wing" and bigotry toward Caucasians and Asians is "left wing," but those people are laughable in their tribalistic thinking and weird politicization of everything.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- flangola7 4y agoHave you even been on 4chan before? This isn't some nuanced "what actually is systemic bigotry?" question. "Ni**s and tra**s should all be burned alive and there should be bounties that pay for it" is not a subtle message. Yet it is a sentiment that is visible (and often verbatim) in every thread, and which receives supportive replies.
- carom 4y agoThere are people of all political persuasions on 4chan. You're free to go on there and deride any white nationalists you see. No one will ban you.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago> You're free to go on there and deride any white nationalists you see Yes but you can do this anywhere. There are a limited number of places where you can openly be a white nationalist without being banned, 4chan is one of them.
- carom 4y agoYou can also be a communist. You can also be an open source maximalist. You can also be a gay dog furry. You can also be trans. You can also be extremely autistic. It is good to have a place where people can exist as themselves and be exposed to different ideas. I would wager that most people who go there are far more accepting than the general population.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoWhat is it that you feel like you gain from being exposed to white nationalism? Being unfazed by horrors isn't a virtue, having scarred your soul like this isn't something to be proud of. You should be uncomfortable talking to a nazi! You should be more than uncomfortable!
- carom 4y agoSomeone might say the same thing about trans people. Should I be extremely uncomfortable talking to a trans person? Of course not. Many people think I should though. As for white nationalists, when engaging in discussion with someone you disagree with you have the opportunity to change their mind. We're all human. We won't always agree. I'm happy to meet everybody as human beings.
- 4y ago
- danjoredd 4y agoThe rules not being enforced really is 4chan's worst problems, and where everything else terrible on that site stems. On /g/, the tech board, you will see nothing but flame wars and troll posts for/against various operating systems and programming languages. Its basically nonstop trolling DESPITE being one of the more serious boards. Worse, a lot of the "jannies"(unpaid tattletales) are in on the trolling and actively make posts to start flame wars. For the admins, its a problem. Besides 8kun, they are pretty much the only major image board with anything really going for it, especially now that 420chan has bit the dust. However, if they enforce the rules, its very likely that people will either stop using it entirely or move on to 8kun instead. For the janitor problem, 4chan relies almost entirely on them to report posts that break the rules to the admins, but since its on a volunteer basis, janitors have no reason to take the role seriously which has led the site to be the gutter it is now. Basically, the whole 4chan system is screwed. I used to go to 420chan as an alternative because it was way more "chill" and there was way less racism and trolling due to it having actual moderation. Now that its gone though my only choice for imageboards are 4chan and its much worse brother, 8kun so I have decided to stop using imageboards entirely until something decent gets started.
- jjulius 4y ago>... which has led the site to be the gutter it is now. ... now? It's felt like a cesspool for decades.
- 876978095789789 4y ago[flagged]
- giraffe_lady 4y agoYou ever hear that joke "if you're wearing a nazi costume it's not a costume?" Ironic far right shitposts are just far right shitposts.
- 876978095789789 4y agoI don't care. 4chan is one of the few large forums remaining on the internet where there's no downvoting, no flagging, and no dang-esque tone policers. I would be much more sad to see it go away than this place.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoYeah I guess that's what it really comes down to. I am willing to make you sad to make it harder for nazis to organize and recruit.
- Dalewyn 4y agoA true advocate of free speech would defend someone's right to be a nazi even if they vehemently disagree with them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Amezarak 4y agoDo you have a specific definition of "nazi" in mind we can apply in a reasonable way? The usual problem I see is anti-"nazi" rhetoric quickly descends into dehumanization rhetoric about how such people don't deserve to live, should be ejected from all civil society, and must be relentlessly persecuted by every legal and social mechanism possible; in fact, all the suspension of every civil right is acceptable if it means stopping nazis. At the same time, it seems that almost everybody who lived in 1940 would be considered a Nazi by today's rather loose standards, and everybody tries to paint their opponents as nazis (even conservatives have the rather inept 'actually, Nazis were SOCIALISTS" retort) and apply this sort of rhetoric to what even 10 years ago was a completely mainstream liberal. Certainly 4chan is full of reprobates of every flavor. But if you live in a society where the existence of Nazi rhetoric is actually dangerous, well, you've already lost your free society. People don't read deranged Internet rants and become mass murderers unless they were born in raised in an already broken, atomized society. The ideology is the excuse for the violence, not the cause. And unfortunately, this sort of rhetoric (we have to do whatever it takes to stop nazis) is also indicative of an worsening social environment. And typically, in worsening social environments, where a variety of ideologies become excuses for broken and/or desperate people to become violent, the government will become more and more totalitarian in response. And we’ll cheer it along.
- dmonitor 4y agoIt’s interesting that the website is considered far-right simply because it doesn’t ban far-right posters. The website isn’t explicitly for right-wingers, but by allowing them to post on the website that’s what it’s become.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sudosysgen 4y agoMore specifically, it allows far righters to post against its rules, but enforces them against other groups. It's hardly surprising then.
- gruez 4y ago> More specifically, it allows far righters to post against its rules, but enforces them against other groups. Source of this happening systemically? I ask systemically because for any forum there's accusations (and corresponding anecdotes) of censorship from both sides, so a few posts don't really prove anything. You see this on twitter for instance, with accusations that both the left and the right are being unfairly targeted.
- sudosysgen 4y ago1. Read the sitewide 4chan rules. 2. Look at /pol/. 3. Break another of the rules. (ie not the racism rule). 4. see your post get deleted.
- gruez 4y agoHow does this answer my original question? Are you just suggesting that because there is racism on /pol/, that it means that rules are being selectively enforced against non-"far righters"?
- sudosysgen 4y ago
- WatchDog 4y agoI think it's far-right representation has certainly grown over time, probably largely as a function of right-wing speech being pushed out of other platforms. However 4chan has always had, and continues to have quite broad demographics, it attracts extremes, by nature of it's low moderation and permissive content policies. Some examples of left wing associated content could be it's very active LGBT user base. It's involvement political movements like "anonymous", targeting groups like the Westboro baptist church, hacking the website of Uganda's anti-gay prime minister, occupy wall street, etc.
- tonfreed 4y agoGrown or concentrated? I can assure you they've always been on Facebook and Twitter, if you didn't see them you were probably bubbled by the algorithm. After the 2016 election a lot of the more mainstream sites decided they didn't want to host them anymore, it's kinda a no-brainer that they'd go to places like 4chan that won't kick them off
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoLGBT is not inherently left wing. I’m not sure why you would think it is.
- antibasilisk 4y ago[flagged]
- beebmam 4y agoAnti-semitism also isn't inherently right wing. That doesn't mean the social phenomenon currently driving anti-semitism isn't right wing. The 4chan moderators are rarely enforcing the rules against racism, like anti-semitism, on the extreme boards, and sometimes they don't enforce those rules on non-extreme boards too. The anti-semitism on the extreme boards is rampant. It's pretty clear that the far-right is the current social phenomenon that is driving modern racism and anti-semitism, at least in the West.
- 4y ago
- retox 4y ago>Rules are often even selectively enforced, sculpting narratives that moderator cliques decide on (see /pol/ for example). I can tell you for a fact that the large majority of the mods despise /pol/. As for rules not being enforced, if a post is not reported it likely won't be acted upon.
- beebmam 4y agoI've reported 1000+ non-illegal posts for breaking the rules, at minimum, with very low (<5%) action/moderation rate on the extreme boards.
- throwaway202303 4y agoalways weird to read someones made up opinion of an online space. the documentary about pepe was the same