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You can make a village in some interesting ways. 4chan is a village, that's why it's one of the best resources/communities on the internet today. I've learned m

You can make a village in some interesting ways. 4chan is a village, that's why it's one of the best resources/communities on the internet today. I've learned much of what I know about LLMs and generative AI on /g/. The toxicity/chaos of the place is probably the main thing that enables it to continue to be a village for all these years. There's more than one way to shear a sheep, and I don't think the 4chan method is the best way to make a village, but a village make it does. I just mention it here because it's probably something that doesn't occur to most people, and maybe it should be something we think about more. I think 4chan has a very interesting property in that the gatekeeping is only your ability to mentally filter every Nth (depending on the board) post being full of slurs. Outside of that it's egalitarian and openly accessible to a greater degree than anywhere else on the internet, there's value to that that people miss.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Outside of that it's egalitarian and openly accessible to a greater degree than anywhere else on the internet Except for all of the hate, vitriol, prejudice, and disregard for the basic humanity of others, it's egalitarian and accessible??
- brookst 3y ago
  Well, sure, if you’re not one of those people, the abuse isn’t even targeted at you.
  - GenerocUsername 3y ago
    Not true. As a member of one of the largest, mainstream segments of America, I constantly feel attacked while browsing 4chan. Your choice to engage is entirely based on your ability to filter and rationalize
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - Applejinx 3y ago
      Huh. I don't hang out on 4chan but I've spent time there, for instance as a would-be draw, ah, 'friend'. Doesn't matter who you are, you constantly ARE attacked while browsing 4chan. That's kind of the point. Nobody gets to be the in crowd and protected: the closest I've seen of that is for instance literal Trump and Putin, and I don't believe for a second they are truly exempt: the more certain /pol/sters try to make them be protected, the more it backfires with 4chan. Whether it is in ANY WAY USEFUL to go to a place where everybody hates you and you hate them right back and that's what the community is, that's another question. Looking back on my relation to such things, part of the reason I drifted off was that I found things to care about or be interested in, didn't matter what, and having any arbitrary interest was as good as 4chan, at dealing with the worthlessness and ennui. 4chan is a really good place to spend time if you haven't killed yourself yet. If you can connect with pretty much anything else in the universe, the other thing has a pretty easy time showing its appeal compared to 4chan. For instance, I got into MLP fandom, bronies. That came off 4chan, a great example of how channers can be redirected into anything else no matter how inappropriate, just as a relief from being channers. It's always gonna be there at the end of the line, when there's nothing else but death. But then, there are actually plenty of other things, 4chan is only one angle a person can take. It's not entirely about choice, though. As choice erodes, 4chan beckons (while flipping you off).
  - eindiran 3y ago
    This is a deep misunderstanding of 4chan, enough so that I find it difficult to believe you've even seen any board on the site you are discussing. The abuse is directed at everyone; no matter what opinion you share, no matter who you are, you will be verbally abused in a variety of ways. Totally innocuous opinions that you would be lauded for or totally ignored for on another site are just cause for being berated and harassed on 4chan, though the extent of it is largely governed by the culture of the particular board. I think this is what OP meant by "egalitarian" (though I certainly wouldn't have chosen that word) -- equal opportunity abuse. This shared constant toxicity plus no karma/upvotes and no attachment to an online persona through anonymity mean that the playing ground is perhaps uniquely level.
    - bmarquez 3y ago
      > The abuse is directed at everyone; no matter what opinion you share, no matter who you are, you will be verbally abused in a variety of ways. Yeah, this is what people misunderstand about 4chan. Obviously my race gets a lot of flak, but I've even seen racial slurs about white Europeans I've never heard anywhere else. I'm not saying it's morally right, but it feels more of a hazing tactic than legitimate hatred. Once you pass that filter you have access to some interesting information.
      - AbrahamParangi 3y ago
        4chan has the most egalitarian slur ecosystem I've ever seen, it's incredible.
    - UncleMeat 3y ago
      But it is absolutely not the case that the abuse is the same magnitude at everyone.
      - buggyipadmettoo 3y ago
        And? Imagine, for example, a comedian who pokes fun at all groups exactly equally. There are infinite types of people, he wouldn’t be able to say a word. Different things are different and that’s not inherently wrong.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > the abuse isn’t even targeted at you. This doesn't actually make a difference one way or another. Abuse is abuse.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Yup. Go measure how often someone is accused of being a groomer pedo, simply because they're trans or have trans kids, vs how often someone is accused of being a groomer pedo, simply benzoate they're cis or have cis kids. The ratio is not 50:50. It isn't even 95:5.
- thot_experiment 3y ago
  It's absolutely not for everyone, but I think the anonymous nature makes it so low stakes it's trivially easy for me to just not care, not engage. You can just ignore things you don't like!
  - mjr00 3y ago
    > You can just ignore things you don't like! I do think this is one of the big hidden problems with upvote/like systems. Seeing a post you don't like or disagree with on Twitter/Facebook/Reddit with a lot of likes/retweets/upvotes/etc psychologically puts you on the defensive. 10,000 likes on a post you disagree with means you're up against an army of 10,000 people who disagreed with you! So you do what's natural: you fight back, you summon your own army of people (hoping to get a respectable counter-army of likes). This creates a toxic environment and you can see it play out on Twitter: every Democrat-leaning tweet will have its top reply be a Republican-leaning tweet with a counter-point, and every Republican with a Democrat. Meanwhile, on 4chan or other old-style message board withouts those systems... yeah, it's just some asshole with a stupid opinion. Just ignore them, no need to waste effort engaging.
    - ddq 3y ago
      Arguably, the addition of showing links to all the replies to a comment could have contributed towards 4chan's drift further into engagement-baiting content. It's the closest analogue to the visual, numeric feedback mechanism you describe. Interesting because from a functional user experience perspective, it's an objectively useful feature for navigating discussions. An obvious addition in terms of web design, yet with unforeseen repercussions. The medium is the message, after all.
      - mjr00 3y ago
        Very true! But even then, the dynamic is a bit different. Reply-links on a post that's an obvious joke are analogous to upvotes, but reply-links on a politically controversial topic could be anything, though most likely disagreements. Plus the absolute number is going to be orders of magnitudes smaller than likes. But I do agree it's contributed to bait posts a lot, yeah. Interesting to see the impact of such a seemingly small UX change.
- anononaut 3y ago
  It's a deliberate gatekeeping mechanism. 4chan isn't a monolith, either. Some communities are tucked well enough away that it isn't _as_ needed. Furthermore, it isn't hate of "others" so much as it's a hate of all.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Furthermore, it isn't hate of "others" so much as it's a hate of all. I don't understand what you mean, unless you mean posters on 4chan hate themselves. Anyone who isn't you is an other, after all.
    - anononaut 3y ago
      You will never find a more self-loathing bunch, in fact! However, there are several recurring threads, some older than Reddit, dedicated to self improvement and escaping neetdom. There are also threads openly embracing it.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    Plenty of people on 4chan don't hate anyone.
- Levitz 3y ago
  It's more egalitarian and accessible than any other social media I can think of, yes. In 4chan a literal nazi, a drag queen, a bona-fide pedophile and a luddite can exchange opinions with no prejudice, because none of them know anyone else's background. You might think that these people can't talk about certain things, but any subject in which discussion becomes too caustic simply doesn't even take place in other platforms, and not every discussion is a life or death discussion, they can talk about photography just fine.
  - csin 3y ago
    "In 4chan a literal nazi, a drag queen, a bona-fide pedophile and a luddite can exchange opinions..." This is overly romantic. I just visited /g/. Less than 1 min in, I see "nigger" and "faggot". I'm sure there are blacks, gays and drag queens that see value in 4chan and are desensitized to those words. But, I'd estimate 99% of the population is white men/boys with antisocial tendencies. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with like minded people building a village. But let's not pretend the culture of the site, doesn't instantly weed out a huge chunk of multiple demographics.
    - bobsmooth 3y ago
      >But, I'd estimate 99% of the population is white men/boys with antisocial tendencies. You'd be wrong https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1220127-pol https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1220127-pol
      - hhmc 3y ago
        one photo isn't data
        bobsmooth 3y ago
        It directly refutes OP's "estimation".
        RavingGoat 3y ago
- korse 3y ago
  I really value places where discussion can happen without gatekeeping. The worst is 2FA or a phone number IMHO, however nothing compares to being able to jump straight into the pool. IRC is one such place and 4chan is another. Even the HN crowd appears to agree[1]. For everything else there is documentation, experimentation, social clubs and entertainment. 1. There is a 'account system' for reputation, but it is trivial to auto generate throwaway accounts for 'hot takes' or counter group-think. There are even simple mirror websites that allow for browsing without hiding flagged posts. No Edit:[I don't think any] attempts have been made to reign this behavior in, likely for good reason. Perhaps it keeps the discourse interesting and encourages lateral thinking?
  - Miraste 3y ago
    You don't even need a mirror website, hiding flagged posts is a setting.
    - korse 3y ago
      Is it a setting that requires a certain amount of karma to display?
      - Miraste 3y ago
        I don't think so. It's called "showdead," right under email on the settings page.
        korse 3y ago
        Thank you. I've seen the option. Didn't know it was the 'flagged' display.
  - Akronymus 3y ago
    I would call the tone of 4chan (insulting everything and anyone) to be gatekeeping, specifically against those who wish to have more moderation/"nicer" discourse. IMO gatekeeping (by the community) is a good/necessary thing for spaces to not become completely gutted/become kicked out of what was formerly your space. I think this image sums it up quite well. https://img.ifunny.co/images/8f4199becd35483d8f498f9ccd0eb73f405de8e49e9211a239997e5a60684d4d_1.jpg https://img.ifunny.co/images/8f4199becd35483d8f498f9ccd0eb73...
- thegodtsar 3y ago
  4chan is the perfect example of what society looks like when nobody plays control nazi with a zen stick! The people that can't stand it are more fucked up than the ones on it. They just don't know it yet or bothered to look.
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    [flagged]
- pessimizer 3y ago
  None of those things prevent you from using the site or limit any of its features (accessibility), and your voice is exactly as loud as everyone else's and their judgment of you is only a judgment of what you've just said (egalitarian.) Just listing a bunch of unrelated shit that upsets you isn't responsive to the comment you're replying to.
- treprinum 3y ago
  You can have a freedom or order, but not both at the same time. Most social networks decided for the order, suppressing freedom. Freedom brings some positives and many negatives, that's life I guess.
- Fricken 3y ago
  Other social media platforms are by and large just more passive aggressive variants of 4chan.
- colordrops 3y ago
  Yes. It's anonymous, so no one knows who you are. It's unfiltered, so anyone can post. Some community members can be assholes, but that doesn't change those two basic ground rules. Those problems you list are present on every online forum and are orthogonal to being free and egalitarian.
- oilchange 3y ago
  > Except for all of the hate, vitriol, prejudice, and disregard for the basic humanity of others, it's egalitarian and accessible?? What's more egalitarian and accessible than allowing all "hate", "vitriol", "prejudice" and "disregard for the basic humanity of others"? What you do you prefer? A non-egalitarian and inaccessible place where only the hate, vitriol, prejudice, etc you agree with is allowed?
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    You say that like the latter choice is ludicrous, but community moderation is very normal online and off.
    - account42 3y ago
      Normal maybe but that doesn't make desirable, certainly not for everyone - hence spaces like 4chan.
      - AlecSchueler 3y ago
        True but we also live in lands of common law, and 4chan is still at the base level limited by those.
- mtrower 3y ago
  > relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Everyone gets equal right and opportunity to demean each other equally!
- opportune 3y ago
  I think a lot of this is a cultural issue you learn to get over. Outside of pol, it’s just shock-humor teenage boy talk. I’m Jewish and mentally filter out all the antisemitic stuff without even thinking about it. 95% of the content outside certain pockets is not even antisemitic, it’s just a shock humor phrase used independently of any actual relation to being Jewish like the term “goyslop”. And yeah, a certain portion of the population does actually hate Jews/transgender people/black people. But when you post nobody knows you are like that. It’s ego-less, you don’t even have an account, so you really don’t even have any reason to care because it’s not directed at you in particular, so it’s just like if you saw something racist on Twitter. Just a very different model compared to the pseudonymous forums/Reddit/hn and fully-linked regular social media.
aedocw 3y ago
Except an environment that is highly toxic does not attract decent people with good community intentions. While you have learned a lot about LLMs and generative AI for instance, it is extremely unlikely you have learned from the most well informed sources. It's definitely a community, but nobody can reasonably argue 4chan is a community that creates the best/most useful content.
- mjr00 3y ago
  > While you have learned a lot about LLMs and generative AI for instance, it is extremely unlikely you have learned from the most well informed sources. 4chan is certainly not the best source compared to, say, scientific papers or technical conferences, but is there any evidence it's any worse than Reddit? A lot of the work pushing Stable Diffusion forward came out of 4chan IIRC. I believe the most popular UI (automatic1111) came out of 4chan.
- thot_experiment 3y ago
  I don't know about that, there's info there that's unavailable anywhere else. I've on a few occasions found that an anon I was interacting with was the primary author on a project I was contributing to or had written a paper on the subject. It's a very diverse bunch.
- 1337biz 3y ago
  You assume that complying with social norms attracts the most brilliant/informed people.
  - GenerocUsername 3y ago
    It's very 'reddit' to assume the brightest people share the same societal conventions as themselves.
    - subsistence234 3y ago
      from the perspective of average redditors, intelligence is obedience to social norms. obedience is their highest virtue, and the more intelligent you are, the better at obeying you can be.
msp26 3y ago
I've gotten actual sources and explanations I used for my master's from /h/. I don't even go on anything there except /hdg/. Surprisingly helpful bunch.
krapp 3y ago
> Outside of that it's egalitarian and openly accessible to a greater degree than anywhere else on the internet, there's value to that that people miss. Let's be real - what people miss is being able to act like racist edgelords on the internet without consequence, and they confuse that freedom with something profound, when it's just a deeply ingrained culture of immaturity. But apart from that one aspect, there's nothing to the accessibility of 4chan that isn't available elsewhere, certainly not quality of conversation.
- thot_experiment 3y ago
  I don't mean to argue that you should go on 4chan or whatever, but as someone who's been on the site on and off for 15 years now I don't even see the hateful stuff really, it just slides past my brain. I think you're wrong about the level of humanity that exists on 4chan, but if it's not for you that's totally fine. 4chan runs the gamut, that's what I'm trying to get across, the good comes with the bad. There's a cost associated, there are tradeoffs, but to paint it the way you have is not matched to the reality of the situation. There are incredibly kind, thoughtful and well intentioned people on there, and I think the anonymity and lack of consequence is one of the things that enables that. What's more, I have a high degree of confidence they're genuine, there's no point in chasing clout on an anonymous messageboard.
  - krapp 3y ago
    You misunderstand my point. Kind, considerate, thoughtful and well intentioned people can be found anywhere online. Bringing them up as an example of the unique nature and power of 4chan's community is disingenuous. 4chan is unique in its tolerance for hate speech, but with any other kind of speech, it's no more or less free than elsewhere.
    - thot_experiment 3y ago
      You're right that 4chan has a high level of tolerance for hatespeech, but that's a secondary, derived characteristic from the anonymity and free speech absolutism. There's a level of humanity enabled by that that you don't see elsewhere.
at_a_remove 3y ago
I think 4chan's "solution" to the moderation problem is more or less the way it will end up being at most places which have a long-term (approaching two decades) survival rate. Absolutely nobody can agree on what should and should not be moderated to some perfect degree, and here the perfect is not only the enemy of the good, it's the enemy of sanity. It always starts off with some easy low-hanging fruit, and then it ends up with people rage-quitting because some moderator has taken the "wrong" stance on discussions about Israel and Palestine, something small like that. The more control, the more that needs to be controlled. It just invites people to filter ever-finer, based on the narcissism of small differences. Ideally, offer some kind of client-side filtration. Let the user maintain it, let them run into the Scunthorpe Problem for themselves. Rate-limit the spam, and be robust about that, but everything else is up to the individual. And frankly, the people who have selected fragility as a kind of lifestyle rarely have much to offer a community anyway. I say this as an Old who has watched communities arise, develop, and fold over decades, on platform after platform, protocol after protocol. Most deaths are the kind of slow-motion suicide that in humans would be reflected in lousy lifestyle choices. And one I see so, so very often is becoming intensely rulebound so that everyone will behave. It never works.
- csin 3y ago
  [dead]
pamelafox 3y ago
My only interaction with 4chan is when one day I discovered a /d/ thread devoted entirely to insulting me. I had never posted on it before, never posted after. So, I think there is some additional gatekeeping: ability to ignore the fact that the one day the community decided to personally make me a target of their vitriol. :(
- ddorian43 3y ago
  Thanks for working on that flask-sqlalchemy typing issue #1140
- korse 3y ago
  Why were you on /d/ in the first place? -_-
  - sen_armstrong 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=7227074 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=7227074
    - korse 3y ago
      Thanks for the context.
- drekipus 3y ago
  I have no context on this but it doesn't make sense to me. Why would the "hentai/alternate" board be targeting you? Even "insulting" you, rather than the norm of posting hentai?
  - pamelafox 3y ago
    I just found the original Google alert from 2011 and it was actually dis.4chan.org/read/prog/ - maybe I misremembered dis as /d? And it was actually in /prog? I don’t use 4chan so not sure the url templating scheme. The URL now 404s fortunately.
  - 3y ago
jrochkind1 3y ago
> The toxicity/chaos of the place is probably the main thing that enables it to continue to be a village How so, are you thinking? After reading OP, my guess is that maybe you're suggesting it's the way the toxicity/chaos keeps too many people from joining, that helps keep it a village? Helps keep it smaller, or less rate of newcomers, since so many find it distasteful? But maybe you mean something else? What are you thinking about how the toxicity/chaos might be the main thing that enables it to continue as a village? How might it do that?
omoikane 3y ago
My impression of 2ch and 4chan is that the anonymous-by-default nature means we bring less of our own personalities to those boards, and the lack of individuality made them village-like. The fact there isn't any kind of karma system might also have something to do with it.
- charlieyu1 3y ago
  I am used to old school forum where everyone is called by a username. This creates some personalities, yet also the freedom to disappear if you want.
Lapha 3y ago
There's definitely smart people on 4chan, but accessibility only exists insofar as there's enough of a culture to punch through the noise floor. Mentally filtering posts only gets you so far, if there's any sort of counterculture then discussion becomes impossible as people actively attempt to derail the thread, see any thread about Rust in the past couple of years for an example. If you're lucky there won't be a counterculture, but the culture of the board won't always be conductive to discussion. I stopped browsing /g/ years ago but I remember a distinct decline in the quality of discussion around Linux and FOSS topics as the board shifted to more towards more general consumer technology, FOSS threads naturally became lower effort and more memetic* as a result to compete with the influx of new users who didn't care about this subculture. When Linus Torvalds announced that he would try to be more polite it gave some ammo to the anti-Linux culture and things deteriorated more. There was a particularly pertinent post around the attitude of NixOS users on /g/ that reflects this period pretty well I think. * This sort of trend isn't unique to 4chan of course, the quality of discussion on hobby subreddits tends to decline when mods start allowing memes and low effort posts. Even if discussion continues it's never the primary focus and becomes harder to find. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36274681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36274681
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  > but the culture of the board won't always be conductive to discussion. A friendly nitpick: the word 'conductive' is a physics term. The term which means 'tending to cause or bring something about' is conducive, with no t, and is pronounced 'cundoosiv'.
tuple 3y ago
"gatekeeping is only your ability to mentally filter every Nth ... post being full of slurs" Well, and filter out the CP, dead and butchered bodies, nazis & any number of other horrifying things I ran across when I've looked at the site. Granted that was years ago but it's not really the type of thing you check up on to see if things have gotten better... Sure maybe not on /g/ but that leaves lots of people just one mistaken click away from potential nightmares. That's not a value people are missing, it's a cost they aren't willing to pay for someone else's concept of being egalitarian. You could fill every post on every site with slurs and I would barely notice. Slurs aren't 4chan's problem though, the crowd of unrestrained sadists is.
- dmonitor 3y ago
  what the fuck kind of boards are you browsing to see that?
  - sieabahlpark 3y ago
    Probably /b/ and 10-15 years ago where it wasn't moderated that well.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      Looks like you're right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301884 It's interesting how people go to a certain board specifically infamous for posting that kind of stuff then are shocked to see said stuff, then generalizing the entire site off that one interaction. It's as if I equate /r/AskHistorians, a heavily-modded academic sub, to /r/(insert raunchy sub here).
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        The users from one are going to be around on the other. This is true everywhere. When Reddit banned various hate speech subreddits you stopped seeing those guys "just asking questions" about the inherent inferiority of certain races in unrelated subreddits anywhere near as often.
swayvil 3y ago
4chan's moderation style has allowed for a truly organic culture-growth. Of shocking depth. Nigh-unique. Other communities are rather shallow, comparatively. Mere implementations of conventional values. For good and ill, of course.
basedbertram 3y ago
In my experience, you have to wade through too many unnecessary posts to find anything useful on 4chan.
- opportune 3y ago
  Yeah, this is the main problem. The offensive shibboleths you can train yourself to ignore, but there’s no getting around filtering past hundreds of low effort comments per insightful one.
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
Kind of reminds of Urbit where Yarvin has hinted that some of the political controversy and inscrutable design were on purpose to keep away leftists. That also goes along with Peter Thiel's (who funded Yarvin) efforts since college to build and nurture rightwing-only networks of techies.
- emmelaich 3y ago
  Similar in purpose to 9front's CoC, though that's intended just get any drama out of the way and focus on the tech. http://9front.org/coc http://9front.org/coc
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  Agree with it or not, it does make some sense I guess. Entryism has been a fairly effective strategy for subverting conservative institutions, and I don't think McCarthy style communist hunting was actually in the long run an effective solution. It just ended up creating martyrs and justified a persecution narrative that bolstered the left-wing cause. The logical solution for the right is to form institutions with such a "stink" from a leftist point of view, that nobody wants to associate with them for fear of permanently tarnishing their reputation.
yedava 3y ago
When I try to think of a real world village analogue of 4chan, the only thing that fits is hazing. To people who participate in hazing, it builds character and brings people together. To everyone else, hazing is horrifying as it has led to enough suicides over the years.
drumhead 3y ago
There's a real time experiment happening right now on 4chan. What happens when echo chambers meet and cant censor each other. Left and right are clashing and they cant ignore one another or run away. They're having to talk to each other for the first time in years probably. This is what the internet was like before the siloed communities of social media platforms and their harsh censorship and moderation.
- ink_13 3y ago
  Nonsense. People can absolutely choose to disengage.
narrator 3y ago
It's kind of like Burning Man in that regard. If you're overly sensitive and can't handle something that is in no way a first class resort experience, and where you have to bring all your own food and water, you're not going to have a good time.
- omoikane 3y ago
  Burning Man is another village that is repeatedly ruined by strangers: https://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/tenprinciples/a-brief-history-of-who-ruined-burning-man/ https://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/...
  - csin 3y ago
    Is that what you took away from reading that post? To me it sounds like the blogger is using "ruined" in a sarcastic way.
Kiro 3y ago
> I've learned much of what I know about LLMs and generative AI on /g/. I was about to say "I keep hearing this" but then realized you are the same person I heard it from last time. Every time I go to /g/ I find it hard to believe you can distill actual useful information from there. Maybe it's just me who don't know how to navigate it.
- thot_experiment 3y ago
  Generally the technique is to be wrong about something and then get the vibe for the territory from people correcting you. I've found it's really helped me focus on where the innovation is being done and to stay on top of a very quickly moving field. Obviously YMMV, using 4chan is a skill. To give a concrete example, a few months ago I was trying to parse through what's necessary to train LoRAs and how best to format a dataset for doing so. Google/Youtube/Reddit weren't giving me good results, and asking on 4chan I was pretty immediately linked a lengthy rentry that had a setup guide for the relevant tools as well as anon's notes on their exploration of the space. It helped me get up an running in a couple hours and avoid a lot of trial and error. Generally the quality is far better than your average medium post. I think largely because people write medium posts for clout and clicks, anonymous rentrys exist out of the goodness of people's hearts and for no ulterior motive.
jacooper 3y ago
You don't have to use 4chan as an example for this. HN is the way it is because of its UI, it prevents too "Normy" people from joining.
jredwards 3y ago
4chan is a village in the same way Somalia is a country.
jlebar 3y ago
I don't think I agree with the principle of, if you can ignore the hate speech it's actually a pretty egalitarian place. Like you say, it's not egalitarian towards those who don't have an easy time ignoring the hate speech. And, okay, in principle if the strength of one's stomach for hate speech was randomly distributed to humans with no correlation to anything else, maybe that would not disqualify it as egalitarian. But it's not. People who face discrimination and hate speech IRL will, on average, surely have less tolerance for it online than people who don't. I have to believe that women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and so on, feel much less welcome on a place like 4chan. They've already spent their "ignoring hate speech points" ignoring someone harassing them on the subway. So whatever it's virtues -- and I'm willing to believe you there are some -- I don't think that a place with this much toxicity can rightly be called egalitarian.
- hn_thrwn 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Why don't you test your theory by walking up to some people and calling them slurs. See if they all shrug it off because at least you're not a cop shooting them.
    - theelous3 3y ago
      That would fall outside the bounds of words on a screen, written indiscriminately.
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        It was a claim about hate speech and not "words on a screen." But you could try texting people you know if you think that dimension is important.
    - hn_thrwn 3y ago
meowtimemania 3y ago
maybe with chatgpt we can get some type of client driven censorship
4ch4n_thrwy 3y ago
[flagged]
- pierat 3y ago
  [dead]
- arboles 3y ago
  You go get them, cookie.
ferbivore 3y ago
But 4chan is precisely the kind of “train station” Viktor is talking about. You’re talking to an ever-changing population of anons. The tiny communities that form over this layer sometimes, around generals or because of anons recognising each other, don’t last very long.
somethingreen 3y ago
Another aspect I would note is honesty. Because there is no long game, interactions are much more raw. A lot of social meta game like dogwhistling, virtue signaling, sockpuppeting largely loses its meaning and is jarringly obvious when someone brings it verbatim from other communities. The experience is closer to shooting shit with friends than a council meeting of HN or a talent show of Reddit.
bungeonsBaggins 3y ago
4chan isn't a village, though, not in the way the author describes. Important characteristics of a "village" as defined in this piece are that you can develop systems of trust through reputation (by interacting with the same people over time) which leads to incentivizing pro-social behavior (there are consequences for acting like a jerk). The author is specifically talking about places where you go to interact with people who share your interests and _aren't_ jerks.
- 93po 3y ago
  I would argue that 4chan develops a reputation as a community-as-a-whole, and pro-social (if you can call it that) behavior is encouraged (in some ways) because of the "good of the community". People on 4chan are jerks if viewed from an outsider. But 4chan regulars probably think nothing of it
throw13062023 3y ago
True. 4chan is FAR superior to any other community, including (perhaps, especially) HN. It will still be there after everything else is long gone. I believe the lack of magic internet points and very hands off moderation is the key. Also, I think it's some kind of addiction to raw unfiltered truth. It's not a place for people who get offended, you have to grow past that and have a thick skin. Say it like it is.

JohnFen 3y ago

> Outside of that it's egalitarian and openly accessible to a greater degree than anywhere else on the internet Except for all of the hate, vitriol, prejudice, and disregard for the basic humanity of others, it's egalitarian and accessible??

brookst 3y ago
Well, sure, if you’re not one of those people, the abuse isn’t even targeted at you.
- GenerocUsername 3y ago
  Not true. As a member of one of the largest, mainstream segments of America, I constantly feel attacked while browsing 4chan. Your choice to engage is entirely based on your ability to filter and rationalize
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Applejinx 3y ago
    Huh. I don't hang out on 4chan but I've spent time there, for instance as a would-be draw, ah, 'friend'. Doesn't matter who you are, you constantly ARE attacked while browsing 4chan. That's kind of the point. Nobody gets to be the in crowd and protected: the closest I've seen of that is for instance literal Trump and Putin, and I don't believe for a second they are truly exempt: the more certain /pol/sters try to make them be protected, the more it backfires with 4chan. Whether it is in ANY WAY USEFUL to go to a place where everybody hates you and you hate them right back and that's what the community is, that's another question. Looking back on my relation to such things, part of the reason I drifted off was that I found things to care about or be interested in, didn't matter what, and having any arbitrary interest was as good as 4chan, at dealing with the worthlessness and ennui. 4chan is a really good place to spend time if you haven't killed yourself yet. If you can connect with pretty much anything else in the universe, the other thing has a pretty easy time showing its appeal compared to 4chan. For instance, I got into MLP fandom, bronies. That came off 4chan, a great example of how channers can be redirected into anything else no matter how inappropriate, just as a relief from being channers. It's always gonna be there at the end of the line, when there's nothing else but death. But then, there are actually plenty of other things, 4chan is only one angle a person can take. It's not entirely about choice, though. As choice erodes, 4chan beckons (while flipping you off).
- eindiran 3y ago
  This is a deep misunderstanding of 4chan, enough so that I find it difficult to believe you've even seen any board on the site you are discussing. The abuse is directed at everyone; no matter what opinion you share, no matter who you are, you will be verbally abused in a variety of ways. Totally innocuous opinions that you would be lauded for or totally ignored for on another site are just cause for being berated and harassed on 4chan, though the extent of it is largely governed by the culture of the particular board. I think this is what OP meant by "egalitarian" (though I certainly wouldn't have chosen that word) -- equal opportunity abuse. This shared constant toxicity plus no karma/upvotes and no attachment to an online persona through anonymity mean that the playing ground is perhaps uniquely level.
  - bmarquez 3y ago
    > The abuse is directed at everyone; no matter what opinion you share, no matter who you are, you will be verbally abused in a variety of ways. Yeah, this is what people misunderstand about 4chan. Obviously my race gets a lot of flak, but I've even seen racial slurs about white Europeans I've never heard anywhere else. I'm not saying it's morally right, but it feels more of a hazing tactic than legitimate hatred. Once you pass that filter you have access to some interesting information.
    - AbrahamParangi 3y ago
      4chan has the most egalitarian slur ecosystem I've ever seen, it's incredible.
  - UncleMeat 3y ago
    But it is absolutely not the case that the abuse is the same magnitude at everyone.
    - buggyipadmettoo 3y ago
      And? Imagine, for example, a comedian who pokes fun at all groups exactly equally. There are infinite types of people, he wouldn’t be able to say a word. Different things are different and that’s not inherently wrong.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > the abuse isn’t even targeted at you. This doesn't actually make a difference one way or another. Abuse is abuse.
- flangola7 3y ago
  Yup. Go measure how often someone is accused of being a groomer pedo, simply because they're trans or have trans kids, vs how often someone is accused of being a groomer pedo, simply benzoate they're cis or have cis kids. The ratio is not 50:50. It isn't even 95:5.
thot_experiment 3y ago
It's absolutely not for everyone, but I think the anonymous nature makes it so low stakes it's trivially easy for me to just not care, not engage. You can just ignore things you don't like!
- mjr00 3y ago
  > You can just ignore things you don't like! I do think this is one of the big hidden problems with upvote/like systems. Seeing a post you don't like or disagree with on Twitter/Facebook/Reddit with a lot of likes/retweets/upvotes/etc psychologically puts you on the defensive. 10,000 likes on a post you disagree with means you're up against an army of 10,000 people who disagreed with you! So you do what's natural: you fight back, you summon your own army of people (hoping to get a respectable counter-army of likes). This creates a toxic environment and you can see it play out on Twitter: every Democrat-leaning tweet will have its top reply be a Republican-leaning tweet with a counter-point, and every Republican with a Democrat. Meanwhile, on 4chan or other old-style message board withouts those systems... yeah, it's just some asshole with a stupid opinion. Just ignore them, no need to waste effort engaging.
  - ddq 3y ago
    Arguably, the addition of showing links to all the replies to a comment could have contributed towards 4chan's drift further into engagement-baiting content. It's the closest analogue to the visual, numeric feedback mechanism you describe. Interesting because from a functional user experience perspective, it's an objectively useful feature for navigating discussions. An obvious addition in terms of web design, yet with unforeseen repercussions. The medium is the message, after all.
    - mjr00 3y ago
      Very true! But even then, the dynamic is a bit different. Reply-links on a post that's an obvious joke are analogous to upvotes, but reply-links on a politically controversial topic could be anything, though most likely disagreements. Plus the absolute number is going to be orders of magnitudes smaller than likes. But I do agree it's contributed to bait posts a lot, yeah. Interesting to see the impact of such a seemingly small UX change.
anononaut 3y ago
It's a deliberate gatekeeping mechanism. 4chan isn't a monolith, either. Some communities are tucked well enough away that it isn't _as_ needed. Furthermore, it isn't hate of "others" so much as it's a hate of all.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Furthermore, it isn't hate of "others" so much as it's a hate of all. I don't understand what you mean, unless you mean posters on 4chan hate themselves. Anyone who isn't you is an other, after all.
  - anononaut 3y ago
    You will never find a more self-loathing bunch, in fact! However, there are several recurring threads, some older than Reddit, dedicated to self improvement and escaping neetdom. There are also threads openly embracing it.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Plenty of people on 4chan don't hate anyone.
Levitz 3y ago
It's more egalitarian and accessible than any other social media I can think of, yes. In 4chan a literal nazi, a drag queen, a bona-fide pedophile and a luddite can exchange opinions with no prejudice, because none of them know anyone else's background. You might think that these people can't talk about certain things, but any subject in which discussion becomes too caustic simply doesn't even take place in other platforms, and not every discussion is a life or death discussion, they can talk about photography just fine.
- csin 3y ago
  "In 4chan a literal nazi, a drag queen, a bona-fide pedophile and a luddite can exchange opinions..." This is overly romantic. I just visited /g/. Less than 1 min in, I see "nigger" and "faggot". I'm sure there are blacks, gays and drag queens that see value in 4chan and are desensitized to those words. But, I'd estimate 99% of the population is white men/boys with antisocial tendencies. Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with like minded people building a village. But let's not pretend the culture of the site, doesn't instantly weed out a huge chunk of multiple demographics.
  - bobsmooth 3y ago
    >But, I'd estimate 99% of the population is white men/boys with antisocial tendencies. You'd be wrong https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1220127-pol https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1220127-pol
    - hhmc 3y ago
      one photo isn't data
      - bobsmooth 3y ago
        It directly refutes OP's "estimation".
        RavingGoat 3y ago
korse 3y ago
I really value places where discussion can happen without gatekeeping. The worst is 2FA or a phone number IMHO, however nothing compares to being able to jump straight into the pool. IRC is one such place and 4chan is another. Even the HN crowd appears to agree[1]. For everything else there is documentation, experimentation, social clubs and entertainment. 1. There is a 'account system' for reputation, but it is trivial to auto generate throwaway accounts for 'hot takes' or counter group-think. There are even simple mirror websites that allow for browsing without hiding flagged posts. No Edit:[I don't think any] attempts have been made to reign this behavior in, likely for good reason. Perhaps it keeps the discourse interesting and encourages lateral thinking?
- Miraste 3y ago
  You don't even need a mirror website, hiding flagged posts is a setting.
  - korse 3y ago
    Is it a setting that requires a certain amount of karma to display?
    - Miraste 3y ago
      I don't think so. It's called "showdead," right under email on the settings page.
      - korse 3y ago
        Thank you. I've seen the option. Didn't know it was the 'flagged' display.
- Akronymus 3y ago
  I would call the tone of 4chan (insulting everything and anyone) to be gatekeeping, specifically against those who wish to have more moderation/"nicer" discourse. IMO gatekeeping (by the community) is a good/necessary thing for spaces to not become completely gutted/become kicked out of what was formerly your space. I think this image sums it up quite well. https://img.ifunny.co/images/8f4199becd35483d8f498f9ccd0eb73f405de8e49e9211a239997e5a60684d4d_1.jpg https://img.ifunny.co/images/8f4199becd35483d8f498f9ccd0eb73...
thegodtsar 3y ago
4chan is the perfect example of what society looks like when nobody plays control nazi with a zen stick! The people that can't stand it are more fucked up than the ones on it. They just don't know it yet or bothered to look.
- Applejinx 3y ago
  [flagged]
pessimizer 3y ago
None of those things prevent you from using the site or limit any of its features (accessibility), and your voice is exactly as loud as everyone else's and their judgment of you is only a judgment of what you've just said (egalitarian.) Just listing a bunch of unrelated shit that upsets you isn't responsive to the comment you're replying to.
treprinum 3y ago
You can have a freedom or order, but not both at the same time. Most social networks decided for the order, suppressing freedom. Freedom brings some positives and many negatives, that's life I guess.
Fricken 3y ago
Other social media platforms are by and large just more passive aggressive variants of 4chan.
colordrops 3y ago
Yes. It's anonymous, so no one knows who you are. It's unfiltered, so anyone can post. Some community members can be assholes, but that doesn't change those two basic ground rules. Those problems you list are present on every online forum and are orthogonal to being free and egalitarian.
oilchange 3y ago
> Except for all of the hate, vitriol, prejudice, and disregard for the basic humanity of others, it's egalitarian and accessible?? What's more egalitarian and accessible than allowing all "hate", "vitriol", "prejudice" and "disregard for the basic humanity of others"? What you do you prefer? A non-egalitarian and inaccessible place where only the hate, vitriol, prejudice, etc you agree with is allowed?
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  You say that like the latter choice is ludicrous, but community moderation is very normal online and off.
  - account42 3y ago
    Normal maybe but that doesn't make desirable, certainly not for everyone - hence spaces like 4chan.
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      True but we also live in lands of common law, and 4chan is still at the base level limited by those.
mtrower 3y ago
> relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Everyone gets equal right and opportunity to demean each other equally!
opportune 3y ago
I think a lot of this is a cultural issue you learn to get over. Outside of pol, it’s just shock-humor teenage boy talk. I’m Jewish and mentally filter out all the antisemitic stuff without even thinking about it. 95% of the content outside certain pockets is not even antisemitic, it’s just a shock humor phrase used independently of any actual relation to being Jewish like the term “goyslop”. And yeah, a certain portion of the population does actually hate Jews/transgender people/black people. But when you post nobody knows you are like that. It’s ego-less, you don’t even have an account, so you really don’t even have any reason to care because it’s not directed at you in particular, so it’s just like if you saw something racist on Twitter. Just a very different model compared to the pseudonymous forums/Reddit/hn and fully-linked regular social media.

aedocw 3y ago

Except an environment that is highly toxic does not attract decent people with good community intentions. While you have learned a lot about LLMs and generative AI for instance, it is extremely unlikely you have learned from the most well informed sources. It's definitely a community, but nobody can reasonably argue 4chan is a community that creates the best/most useful content.

mjr00 3y ago
> While you have learned a lot about LLMs and generative AI for instance, it is extremely unlikely you have learned from the most well informed sources. 4chan is certainly not the best source compared to, say, scientific papers or technical conferences, but is there any evidence it's any worse than Reddit? A lot of the work pushing Stable Diffusion forward came out of 4chan IIRC. I believe the most popular UI (automatic1111) came out of 4chan.
thot_experiment 3y ago
I don't know about that, there's info there that's unavailable anywhere else. I've on a few occasions found that an anon I was interacting with was the primary author on a project I was contributing to or had written a paper on the subject. It's a very diverse bunch.
1337biz 3y ago
You assume that complying with social norms attracts the most brilliant/informed people.
- GenerocUsername 3y ago
  It's very 'reddit' to assume the brightest people share the same societal conventions as themselves.
  - subsistence234 3y ago
    from the perspective of average redditors, intelligence is obedience to social norms. obedience is their highest virtue, and the more intelligent you are, the better at obeying you can be.

msp26 3y ago

I've gotten actual sources and explanations I used for my master's from /h/. I don't even go on anything there except /hdg/. Surprisingly helpful bunch.

krapp 3y ago

> Outside of that it's egalitarian and openly accessible to a greater degree than anywhere else on the internet, there's value to that that people miss. Let's be real - what people miss is being able to act like racist edgelords on the internet without consequence, and they confuse that freedom with something profound, when it's just a deeply ingrained culture of immaturity. But apart from that one aspect, there's nothing to the accessibility of 4chan that isn't available elsewhere, certainly not quality of conversation.

thot_experiment 3y ago
I don't mean to argue that you should go on 4chan or whatever, but as someone who's been on the site on and off for 15 years now I don't even see the hateful stuff really, it just slides past my brain. I think you're wrong about the level of humanity that exists on 4chan, but if it's not for you that's totally fine. 4chan runs the gamut, that's what I'm trying to get across, the good comes with the bad. There's a cost associated, there are tradeoffs, but to paint it the way you have is not matched to the reality of the situation. There are incredibly kind, thoughtful and well intentioned people on there, and I think the anonymity and lack of consequence is one of the things that enables that. What's more, I have a high degree of confidence they're genuine, there's no point in chasing clout on an anonymous messageboard.
- krapp 3y ago
  You misunderstand my point. Kind, considerate, thoughtful and well intentioned people can be found anywhere online. Bringing them up as an example of the unique nature and power of 4chan's community is disingenuous. 4chan is unique in its tolerance for hate speech, but with any other kind of speech, it's no more or less free than elsewhere.
  - thot_experiment 3y ago
    You're right that 4chan has a high level of tolerance for hatespeech, but that's a secondary, derived characteristic from the anonymity and free speech absolutism. There's a level of humanity enabled by that that you don't see elsewhere.

at_a_remove 3y ago

I think 4chan's "solution" to the moderation problem is more or less the way it will end up being at most places which have a long-term (approaching two decades) survival rate. Absolutely nobody can agree on what should and should not be moderated to some perfect degree, and here the perfect is not only the enemy of the good, it's the enemy of sanity. It always starts off with some easy low-hanging fruit, and then it ends up with people rage-quitting because some moderator has taken the "wrong" stance on discussions about Israel and Palestine, something small like that. The more control, the more that needs to be controlled. It just invites people to filter ever-finer, based on the narcissism of small differences. Ideally, offer some kind of client-side filtration. Let the user maintain it, let them run into the Scunthorpe Problem for themselves. Rate-limit the spam, and be robust about that, but everything else is up to the individual. And frankly, the people who have selected fragility as a kind of lifestyle rarely have much to offer a community anyway. I say this as an Old who has watched communities arise, develop, and fold over decades, on platform after platform, protocol after protocol. Most deaths are the kind of slow-motion suicide that in humans would be reflected in lousy lifestyle choices. And one I see so, so very often is becoming intensely rulebound so that everyone will behave. It never works.

csin 3y ago
[dead]

pamelafox 3y ago

My only interaction with 4chan is when one day I discovered a /d/ thread devoted entirely to insulting me. I had never posted on it before, never posted after. So, I think there is some additional gatekeeping: ability to ignore the fact that the one day the community decided to personally make me a target of their vitriol. :(

ddorian43 3y ago
Thanks for working on that flask-sqlalchemy typing issue #1140
korse 3y ago
Why were you on /d/ in the first place? -_-
- sen_armstrong 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=7227074 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=7227074
  - korse 3y ago
    Thanks for the context.
drekipus 3y ago
I have no context on this but it doesn't make sense to me. Why would the "hentai/alternate" board be targeting you? Even "insulting" you, rather than the norm of posting hentai?
- pamelafox 3y ago
  I just found the original Google alert from 2011 and it was actually dis.4chan.org/read/prog/ - maybe I misremembered dis as /d? And it was actually in /prog? I don’t use 4chan so not sure the url templating scheme. The URL now 404s fortunately.
- 3y ago

jrochkind1 3y ago

> The toxicity/chaos of the place is probably the main thing that enables it to continue to be a village How so, are you thinking? After reading OP, my guess is that maybe you're suggesting it's the way the toxicity/chaos keeps too many people from joining, that helps keep it a village? Helps keep it smaller, or less rate of newcomers, since so many find it distasteful? But maybe you mean something else? What are you thinking about how the toxicity/chaos might be the main thing that enables it to continue as a village? How might it do that?

omoikane 3y ago

My impression of 2ch and 4chan is that the anonymous-by-default nature means we bring less of our own personalities to those boards, and the lack of individuality made them village-like. The fact there isn't any kind of karma system might also have something to do with it.

charlieyu1 3y ago
I am used to old school forum where everyone is called by a username. This creates some personalities, yet also the freedom to disappear if you want.

Lapha 3y ago

There's definitely smart people on 4chan, but accessibility only exists insofar as there's enough of a culture to punch through the noise floor. Mentally filtering posts only gets you so far, if there's any sort of counterculture then discussion becomes impossible as people actively attempt to derail the thread, see any thread about Rust in the past couple of years for an example. If you're lucky there won't be a counterculture, but the culture of the board won't always be conductive to discussion. I stopped browsing /g/ years ago but I remember a distinct decline in the quality of discussion around Linux and FOSS topics as the board shifted to more towards more general consumer technology, FOSS threads naturally became lower effort and more memetic* as a result to compete with the influx of new users who didn't care about this subculture. When Linus Torvalds announced that he would try to be more polite it gave some ammo to the anti-Linux culture and things deteriorated more. There was a particularly pertinent post around the attitude of NixOS users on /g/ that reflects this period pretty well I think. * This sort of trend isn't unique to 4chan of course, the quality of discussion on hobby subreddits tends to decline when mods start allowing memes and low effort posts. Even if discussion continues it's never the primary focus and becomes harder to find. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36274681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36274681

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Eisenstein 3y ago
> but the culture of the board won't always be conductive to discussion. A friendly nitpick: the word 'conductive' is a physics term. The term which means 'tending to cause or bring something about' is conducive, with no t, and is pronounced 'cundoosiv'.

tuple 3y ago

"gatekeeping is only your ability to mentally filter every Nth ... post being full of slurs" Well, and filter out the CP, dead and butchered bodies, nazis & any number of other horrifying things I ran across when I've looked at the site. Granted that was years ago but it's not really the type of thing you check up on to see if things have gotten better... Sure maybe not on /g/ but that leaves lots of people just one mistaken click away from potential nightmares. That's not a value people are missing, it's a cost they aren't willing to pay for someone else's concept of being egalitarian. You could fill every post on every site with slurs and I would barely notice. Slurs aren't 4chan's problem though, the crowd of unrestrained sadists is.

dmonitor 3y ago
what the fuck kind of boards are you browsing to see that?
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  Probably /b/ and 10-15 years ago where it wasn't moderated that well.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Looks like you're right: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301884 It's interesting how people go to a certain board specifically infamous for posting that kind of stuff then are shocked to see said stuff, then generalizing the entire site off that one interaction. It's as if I equate /r/AskHistorians, a heavily-modded academic sub, to /r/(insert raunchy sub here).
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      The users from one are going to be around on the other. This is true everywhere. When Reddit banned various hate speech subreddits you stopped seeing those guys "just asking questions" about the inherent inferiority of certain races in unrelated subreddits anywhere near as often.

swayvil 3y ago

4chan's moderation style has allowed for a truly organic culture-growth. Of shocking depth. Nigh-unique. Other communities are rather shallow, comparatively. Mere implementations of conventional values. For good and ill, of course.

basedbertram 3y ago

In my experience, you have to wade through too many unnecessary posts to find anything useful on 4chan.

opportune 3y ago
Yeah, this is the main problem. The offensive shibboleths you can train yourself to ignore, but there’s no getting around filtering past hundreds of low effort comments per insightful one.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

Kind of reminds of Urbit where Yarvin has hinted that some of the political controversy and inscrutable design were on purpose to keep away leftists. That also goes along with Peter Thiel's (who funded Yarvin) efforts since college to build and nurture rightwing-only networks of techies.

emmelaich 3y ago
Similar in purpose to 9front's CoC, though that's intended just get any drama out of the way and focus on the tech. http://9front.org/coc http://9front.org/coc
marginalia_nu 3y ago
Agree with it or not, it does make some sense I guess. Entryism has been a fairly effective strategy for subverting conservative institutions, and I don't think McCarthy style communist hunting was actually in the long run an effective solution. It just ended up creating martyrs and justified a persecution narrative that bolstered the left-wing cause. The logical solution for the right is to form institutions with such a "stink" from a leftist point of view, that nobody wants to associate with them for fear of permanently tarnishing their reputation.

yedava 3y ago

When I try to think of a real world village analogue of 4chan, the only thing that fits is hazing. To people who participate in hazing, it builds character and brings people together. To everyone else, hazing is horrifying as it has led to enough suicides over the years.

drumhead 3y ago

There's a real time experiment happening right now on 4chan. What happens when echo chambers meet and cant censor each other. Left and right are clashing and they cant ignore one another or run away. They're having to talk to each other for the first time in years probably. This is what the internet was like before the siloed communities of social media platforms and their harsh censorship and moderation.

ink_13 3y ago
Nonsense. People can absolutely choose to disengage.

narrator 3y ago

It's kind of like Burning Man in that regard. If you're overly sensitive and can't handle something that is in no way a first class resort experience, and where you have to bring all your own food and water, you're not going to have a good time.

omoikane 3y ago
Burning Man is another village that is repeatedly ruined by strangers: https://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/tenprinciples/a-brief-history-of-who-ruined-burning-man/ https://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/...
- csin 3y ago
  Is that what you took away from reading that post? To me it sounds like the blogger is using "ruined" in a sarcastic way.

Kiro 3y ago

> I've learned much of what I know about LLMs and generative AI on /g/. I was about to say "I keep hearing this" but then realized you are the same person I heard it from last time. Every time I go to /g/ I find it hard to believe you can distill actual useful information from there. Maybe it's just me who don't know how to navigate it.

thot_experiment 3y ago
Generally the technique is to be wrong about something and then get the vibe for the territory from people correcting you. I've found it's really helped me focus on where the innovation is being done and to stay on top of a very quickly moving field. Obviously YMMV, using 4chan is a skill. To give a concrete example, a few months ago I was trying to parse through what's necessary to train LoRAs and how best to format a dataset for doing so. Google/Youtube/Reddit weren't giving me good results, and asking on 4chan I was pretty immediately linked a lengthy rentry that had a setup guide for the relevant tools as well as anon's notes on their exploration of the space. It helped me get up an running in a couple hours and avoid a lot of trial and error. Generally the quality is far better than your average medium post. I think largely because people write medium posts for clout and clicks, anonymous rentrys exist out of the goodness of people's hearts and for no ulterior motive.

jacooper 3y ago

You don't have to use 4chan as an example for this. HN is the way it is because of its UI, it prevents too "Normy" people from joining.

jredwards 3y ago

4chan is a village in the same way Somalia is a country.

jlebar 3y ago

I don't think I agree with the principle of, if you can ignore the hate speech it's actually a pretty egalitarian place. Like you say, it's not egalitarian towards those who don't have an easy time ignoring the hate speech. And, okay, in principle if the strength of one's stomach for hate speech was randomly distributed to humans with no correlation to anything else, maybe that would not disqualify it as egalitarian. But it's not. People who face discrimination and hate speech IRL will, on average, surely have less tolerance for it online than people who don't. I have to believe that women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and so on, feel much less welcome on a place like 4chan. They've already spent their "ignoring hate speech points" ignoring someone harassing them on the subway. So whatever it's virtues -- and I'm willing to believe you there are some -- I don't think that a place with this much toxicity can rightly be called egalitarian.

hn_thrwn 3y ago
[flagged]
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Why don't you test your theory by walking up to some people and calling them slurs. See if they all shrug it off because at least you're not a cop shooting them.
  - theelous3 3y ago
    That would fall outside the bounds of words on a screen, written indiscriminately.
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      It was a claim about hate speech and not "words on a screen." But you could try texting people you know if you think that dimension is important.
  - hn_thrwn 3y ago

meowtimemania 3y ago

maybe with chatgpt we can get some type of client driven censorship

4ch4n_thrwy 3y ago

[flagged]

pierat 3y ago
[dead]
arboles 3y ago
You go get them, cookie.

ferbivore 3y ago

But 4chan is precisely the kind of “train station” Viktor is talking about. You’re talking to an ever-changing population of anons. The tiny communities that form over this layer sometimes, around generals or because of anons recognising each other, don’t last very long.

somethingreen 3y ago

Another aspect I would note is honesty. Because there is no long game, interactions are much more raw. A lot of social meta game like dogwhistling, virtue signaling, sockpuppeting largely loses its meaning and is jarringly obvious when someone brings it verbatim from other communities. The experience is closer to shooting shit with friends than a council meeting of HN or a talent show of Reddit.

bungeonsBaggins 3y ago

4chan isn't a village, though, not in the way the author describes. Important characteristics of a "village" as defined in this piece are that you can develop systems of trust through reputation (by interacting with the same people over time) which leads to incentivizing pro-social behavior (there are consequences for acting like a jerk). The author is specifically talking about places where you go to interact with people who share your interests and _aren't_ jerks.

93po 3y ago
I would argue that 4chan develops a reputation as a community-as-a-whole, and pro-social (if you can call it that) behavior is encouraged (in some ways) because of the "good of the community". People on 4chan are jerks if viewed from an outsider. But 4chan regulars probably think nothing of it

throw13062023 3y ago

True. 4chan is FAR superior to any other community, including (perhaps, especially) HN. It will still be there after everything else is long gone. I believe the lack of magic internet points and very hands off moderation is the key. Also, I think it's some kind of addiction to raw unfiltered truth. It's not a place for people who get offended, you have to grow past that and have a thick skin. Say it like it is.