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I wasn't a very active 4chan poster to begin with, but when they introduced this awful CAPTCHA, and later the 300s countdown before making the first post, I com

I wasn't a very active 4chan poster to begin with, but when they introduced this awful CAPTCHA, and later the 300s countdown before making the first post, I completely lost interest in using the website. Anonymous boards were supposed to be low-friction, but now 4chan is one of the most user-hostile social media platforms around. It takes a special kind of dedication to post there, which I seriously doubt helps the quality of the site.

blackjackfoe 2y ago
Do a Web search for "4Chan CAPTCHA" sometime. All the top results will likely be people complaining about how terrible it is. You're certainly not alone. The worst part about the countdown: if you wait too long to make a post after waiting the 10 minutes (eg: you get distracted,) it will expire, and you have to wait another 10 minutes.
prettywoman 2y ago
> 300s countdown I don't get why they added that nasty "feature" to the post form, it really discourages you to post(maybe it's because they want to sell you their 4chan pass), I don't understand why 4chan is still active
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Presumably, anyone who regularly uses 4chan would register. Once you register and click the login link in your email, you just get the easy Cloudflare captcha and no countdown. The horrible captcha + 300s countdown is for completely unauthed users. Most sites don't even allow unauthed users to post at all.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  If you don't get it, you probably don't spend too much time on 4chan. There is A LOT of ban evasion on 4chan. If you have a dynamic IP address from your ISP, you just spam/derail threads with personal crusades/whatever until you get banned, reset your router and repeat. This countdown increases the cost of ban evasion, since you can't get right back in to continue. Everyone on your targeted board/thread now gets at least a 15-minute respite. They've also had to blacklist entire ISP from making any posts because some people are constantly ban evading on them. Especially mobile ISPs, where there's basically an unlimited amount of fresh IPv6 addresses available.
alekratz 2y ago
one of the biggest problems that 4chan has to combat is spam. unfortunately, at 4chan's scale, hcaptcha and recaptcha are not free. 4chan is not exactly a font of money, either. the only reason they turned to this awful homebrew captcha was because recaptcha stopped being free. is there any better way to do it with a single developer for a website that serves millions of people a day?
- avar 2y ago
  > is there any better way to do > it with a single developer for > a website that serves millions > of people a day? No, the other reason they're using this is to make it so annoying that you'll spend $20/yr to buy a 4chan pass to bypass it. If you're not making your free website annoying to drive revenue there's obvious ways to make it less annoying. E.g. keep the annoying captcha, but don't show one again for the lifetime of a cookie, validate users who can make a money transfer of $0.01 etc.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - Anon1096 2y ago
    > keep the annoying captcha, but don't show one again for the lifetime of a cookie This is already being done, there's a cookie and heuristics in place that will give you an easier captcha or occasionally skip it entirely. But 4chan really does have a couple (and I truly mean a small amount of super super dedicated users) of bad actors who constantly spam and try to work around any roadblocks given to annoy the rest of the userbase. You cannot give them a reliable way to spam no matter what. That's why there's now many country and region blocks in addition to your standard VPN/DC IP range blocks. Plus the Cloudflare check added a couple years ago.
    - bsagdiyev 2y ago
      Is the anontalk guy still up to his shenanigans? It's admittedly been a very long time since I've used 4chan.
123yawaworht456 2y ago
recaptcha is terrible if you are cursed with an ISP that Google deems icky for some indiscernible reason. at the time, I was getting slowly fading bullshit that invariably gaslit me with "try again" several times. when they've switched to custom captcha, I actually started posting again instead of just lurking. yeah, the recent 5-15 minute countdown before your first post is a bizarre thing, but I assume the volume of spam and ban-evading schizos they're dealing with is ungodly. a single dedicated shithead can shit up a general or a slow board indefinitely by just resetting their router or switching airplane mode on/off for a few minutes when they get banned. >but now 4chan is one of the most user-hostile social media platforms around. virtually every single big platform requires your phone number.
shortrounddev2 2y ago
They had a gigantic spam problem, captcha saved the site
- paulpauper 2y ago
  then how does Reddit and Twitter work without such an obnoxious captcha? I find it hard to believe those sites get less spam. Or any other community.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    You need accounts with unique emails to post everywhere else, and those sites are massive with hundreds/thousands of devs, some of whom work exclusively on anti-spam. If you make a site immune to advertising revenue and any other source of profit, you’re going to struggle to pay for “internet-scale” efforts.
  - blackjackfoe 2y ago
    Reddit and Twitter both have huge bot problems. On Reddit it's a bit less obvious due to the upvote/downvote system, and on Twitter it's a bit less obvious because you usually only follow people you want to see. Make a post on Twitter that mentions something like cryptocurrency, and you'll get a dozen bot replies immediately.
  - KaoruAoiShiho 2y ago
    They don't surface every post to everyone unlike 4chan so spam is much less visible though they still exist.
  - shortrounddev2 2y ago
    Reddit and Twitter are replete with bots
  - RockRobotRock 2y ago
    First, they aren't anonymous. It's a lot more friction when you have to generate an account (which also requires a captcha). Second, Twitter absolutely does make you perform captchas if they suspect you are a bot. I say this as someone who ran Twitter bots previously.
paulpauper 2y ago
Same here. the captcha is the tip of the iceberg. VPNs , proxies...all blocked. Tons of ghosting and censoring of posts too. Also crawling with feds and people trying to get you to incriminate yourself. I love the option to bypass it with crypto. Yeah, like I am going to give them btc, which will be traced by every agency and coin analysis firm and also get my wallet/exchange account restricted by being linked to 4chan. The owners more than happy to comply with every 3-letter agency request for info.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  taps the sign
scrlk 2y ago
The addition of the post countdown has had a pretty noticeable effect on posts/day across multiple boards: https://4stats.io/ https://4stats.io/ When an earlier version was trialled on /biz/ (mandatory email verification - https://warosu.org/biz/thread/58388587 https://warosu.org/biz/thread/58388587), it nuked the board and it hasn't recovered.
jimbob45 2y ago
but now 4chan is one of the most user-hostile social media platforms around Stay off /v/, /tv/, /pol/, and /a/ and you’ll have a pretty good time.
- yungporko 2y ago
  certainly won't have a good time on /b/ either
  - meowface 2y ago
    It's mostly porn nowadays but through some chain of events, /b/ actually is ideologically one of the most normal boards on the site now. Not even kidding. Many - probably most - other boards are majority Trumpists or neo-Nazis but /b/ is roughly at least 50% liberal or libertarian. So politics threads in /b/ are actually better than in a ton of other boards.
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blackjackfoe 2y ago

Do a Web search for "4Chan CAPTCHA" sometime. All the top results will likely be people complaining about how terrible it is. You're certainly not alone. The worst part about the countdown: if you wait too long to make a post after waiting the 10 minutes (eg: you get distracted,) it will expire, and you have to wait another 10 minutes.

prettywoman 2y ago

> 300s countdown I don't get why they added that nasty "feature" to the post form, it really discourages you to post(maybe it's because they want to sell you their 4chan pass), I don't understand why 4chan is still active

hombre_fatal 2y ago
Presumably, anyone who regularly uses 4chan would register. Once you register and click the login link in your email, you just get the easy Cloudflare captcha and no countdown. The horrible captcha + 300s countdown is for completely unauthed users. Most sites don't even allow unauthed users to post at all.
Hamuko 2y ago
If you don't get it, you probably don't spend too much time on 4chan. There is A LOT of ban evasion on 4chan. If you have a dynamic IP address from your ISP, you just spam/derail threads with personal crusades/whatever until you get banned, reset your router and repeat. This countdown increases the cost of ban evasion, since you can't get right back in to continue. Everyone on your targeted board/thread now gets at least a 15-minute respite. They've also had to blacklist entire ISP from making any posts because some people are constantly ban evading on them. Especially mobile ISPs, where there's basically an unlimited amount of fresh IPv6 addresses available.

alekratz 2y ago

one of the biggest problems that 4chan has to combat is spam. unfortunately, at 4chan's scale, hcaptcha and recaptcha are not free. 4chan is not exactly a font of money, either. the only reason they turned to this awful homebrew captcha was because recaptcha stopped being free. is there any better way to do it with a single developer for a website that serves millions of people a day?

avar 2y ago
> is there any better way to do > it with a single developer for > a website that serves millions > of people a day? No, the other reason they're using this is to make it so annoying that you'll spend $20/yr to buy a 4chan pass to bypass it. If you're not making your free website annoying to drive revenue there's obvious ways to make it less annoying. E.g. keep the annoying captcha, but don't show one again for the lifetime of a cookie, validate users who can make a money transfer of $0.01 etc.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Anon1096 2y ago
  > keep the annoying captcha, but don't show one again for the lifetime of a cookie This is already being done, there's a cookie and heuristics in place that will give you an easier captcha or occasionally skip it entirely. But 4chan really does have a couple (and I truly mean a small amount of super super dedicated users) of bad actors who constantly spam and try to work around any roadblocks given to annoy the rest of the userbase. You cannot give them a reliable way to spam no matter what. That's why there's now many country and region blocks in addition to your standard VPN/DC IP range blocks. Plus the Cloudflare check added a couple years ago.
  - bsagdiyev 2y ago
    Is the anontalk guy still up to his shenanigans? It's admittedly been a very long time since I've used 4chan.

123yawaworht456 2y ago

recaptcha is terrible if you are cursed with an ISP that Google deems icky for some indiscernible reason. at the time, I was getting slowly fading bullshit that invariably gaslit me with "try again" several times. when they've switched to custom captcha, I actually started posting again instead of just lurking. yeah, the recent 5-15 minute countdown before your first post is a bizarre thing, but I assume the volume of spam and ban-evading schizos they're dealing with is ungodly. a single dedicated shithead can shit up a general or a slow board indefinitely by just resetting their router or switching airplane mode on/off for a few minutes when they get banned. >but now 4chan is one of the most user-hostile social media platforms around. virtually every single big platform requires your phone number.

shortrounddev2 2y ago

They had a gigantic spam problem, captcha saved the site

paulpauper 2y ago
then how does Reddit and Twitter work without such an obnoxious captcha? I find it hard to believe those sites get less spam. Or any other community.
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  You need accounts with unique emails to post everywhere else, and those sites are massive with hundreds/thousands of devs, some of whom work exclusively on anti-spam. If you make a site immune to advertising revenue and any other source of profit, you’re going to struggle to pay for “internet-scale” efforts.
- blackjackfoe 2y ago
  Reddit and Twitter both have huge bot problems. On Reddit it's a bit less obvious due to the upvote/downvote system, and on Twitter it's a bit less obvious because you usually only follow people you want to see. Make a post on Twitter that mentions something like cryptocurrency, and you'll get a dozen bot replies immediately.
- KaoruAoiShiho 2y ago
  They don't surface every post to everyone unlike 4chan so spam is much less visible though they still exist.
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  Reddit and Twitter are replete with bots
- RockRobotRock 2y ago
  First, they aren't anonymous. It's a lot more friction when you have to generate an account (which also requires a captcha). Second, Twitter absolutely does make you perform captchas if they suspect you are a bot. I say this as someone who ran Twitter bots previously.

paulpauper 2y ago

Same here. the captcha is the tip of the iceberg. VPNs , proxies...all blocked. Tons of ghosting and censoring of posts too. Also crawling with feds and people trying to get you to incriminate yourself. I love the option to bypass it with crypto. Yeah, like I am going to give them btc, which will be traced by every agency and coin analysis firm and also get my wallet/exchange account restricted by being linked to 4chan. The owners more than happy to comply with every 3-letter agency request for info.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
taps the sign

scrlk 2y ago

The addition of the post countdown has had a pretty noticeable effect on posts/day across multiple boards: https://4stats.io/ https://4stats.io/ When an earlier version was trialled on /biz/ (mandatory email verification - https://warosu.org/biz/thread/58388587 https://warosu.org/biz/thread/58388587), it nuked the board and it hasn't recovered.

jimbob45 2y ago

but now 4chan is one of the most user-hostile social media platforms around Stay off /v/, /tv/, /pol/, and /a/ and you’ll have a pretty good time.

yungporko 2y ago
certainly won't have a good time on /b/ either
- meowface 2y ago
  It's mostly porn nowadays but through some chain of events, /b/ actually is ideologically one of the most normal boards on the site now. Not even kidding. Many - probably most - other boards are majority Trumpists or neo-Nazis but /b/ is roughly at least 50% liberal or libertarian. So politics threads in /b/ are actually better than in a ton of other boards.

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