6 ms·

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

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.
- alekratz 2y ago
  >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. I think this is a really cynical outlook, especially for a website that is not run as a modern tech-centric company. 4chan's roots are in that of the Old Internet, where it is a creative and messy and interesting place to be. why would they be banking solely on using a terrible captcha as a method to drive user subscriptions, when they have the option to run circus-tent ads? if making money was their sole purpose, why would they not kick the problematic and porn boards to the curb and ban the use of slurs to make room for more friendly advertisers? there are so many other avenues to increase profitability that most websites have taken which 4chan has staunchly refused to follow. why would they choose only the 4chan pass and ads as their only opportunity at making money?
  - iterance 2y ago
    Doing so would destroy the culture of 4chan. Companies centered around communities don't generally have leeway to shape their communities into a profitable form by directly altering the fabric of the community. Time and again it has been shown that forcing changes to the identity of a space leads to communities' rapid demise. In rare circumstances and with a skilled hand a community can be guided here and there in even some significant ways, but 4chan probably does not have that option: they'd need a massive shift to pull off what you describe. Instead profit must generally be built around what is there. But whether or not such communities exist to make profit, they surely must be profitable, or they will not survive. They must, some time or another, be free of deficit. This is not a matter of capitalist greed for most communities, but an attempt to find a path towards stability.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    Cynical yes, incorrect no. The link between spam protection and payment is well documented and as old as the internet. Consider the origins of bitcoin and PoW have been as a currency to stop email spam. I do agree that the incentive is probably not to make money, but to deter spam. That said after so many times the company has been sold, I wouldn't disregard that theory
  - avar 2y ago
joe-collins 2y ago
Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. It's the spam that tops the problem list.
- ChadNauseam 2y ago
  GP said "one of the biggest problems", not "the biggest problem"
- Etherlord87 2y ago
  It's a bit embarrassing I even have to explain this, but yes, because racism or sexism are very important parts of 4chan's appeal: it's a place with freedom of speech. Let's be real the standards of discussion are low, but people can discuss stuff freely, which they wouldn't be able to if everything was buried under some GPT generated spam.
  - codexon 2y ago
    A lot of people think 4chan is one of the last bastions of free speech on the internet because they see a lot of racism that would normally be banned anywhere else. But if you post something that goes against the alt-right that pisses them off too much and getting a lot of replies, it'll be deleted within minutes, or you'll even get banned for being "off topic". 4chan is not free speech, it is just a haven for the alt-right.
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      They do have rules and the site is quite moderated. I do think though that any such site or platform will have the issue of judges inflecting their bias in their application of the rules. So I wouldn't say that it is a unique phenomenon. That said, of course there is a semantic as well as technical identity to 4chan. And they are quite connected, rather than isolated. 4chan, apart from its lax rules on what we now call hate speech, has developed a community where insults are now part of its culture. The fact that the site is anonymous greatly influences that animosity. I like to think of 4chan not as a place where horrible people go, but where people go to be horrible. Of course you have the dedicated users, neets or schizos or chronically online, but again that's a propery of every site, and not necessarily a majority. So if you read /pol/ or /b/ like articles of an organization with an editorial line, sure you will see nazis and a deranged group of people. If you however see it like bathroom wall writings, you will see a bit of everyone.

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.
alekratz 2y ago
>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. I think this is a really cynical outlook, especially for a website that is not run as a modern tech-centric company. 4chan's roots are in that of the Old Internet, where it is a creative and messy and interesting place to be. why would they be banking solely on using a terrible captcha as a method to drive user subscriptions, when they have the option to run circus-tent ads? if making money was their sole purpose, why would they not kick the problematic and porn boards to the curb and ban the use of slurs to make room for more friendly advertisers? there are so many other avenues to increase profitability that most websites have taken which 4chan has staunchly refused to follow. why would they choose only the 4chan pass and ads as their only opportunity at making money?
- iterance 2y ago
  Doing so would destroy the culture of 4chan. Companies centered around communities don't generally have leeway to shape their communities into a profitable form by directly altering the fabric of the community. Time and again it has been shown that forcing changes to the identity of a space leads to communities' rapid demise. In rare circumstances and with a skilled hand a community can be guided here and there in even some significant ways, but 4chan probably does not have that option: they'd need a massive shift to pull off what you describe. Instead profit must generally be built around what is there. But whether or not such communities exist to make profit, they surely must be profitable, or they will not survive. They must, some time or another, be free of deficit. This is not a matter of capitalist greed for most communities, but an attempt to find a path towards stability.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  Cynical yes, incorrect no. The link between spam protection and payment is well documented and as old as the internet. Consider the origins of bitcoin and PoW have been as a currency to stop email spam. I do agree that the incentive is probably not to make money, but to deter spam. That said after so many times the company has been sold, I wouldn't disregard that theory
- avar 2y ago

joe-collins 2y ago

Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. It's the spam that tops the problem list.

ChadNauseam 2y ago
GP said "one of the biggest problems", not "the biggest problem"
Etherlord87 2y ago
It's a bit embarrassing I even have to explain this, but yes, because racism or sexism are very important parts of 4chan's appeal: it's a place with freedom of speech. Let's be real the standards of discussion are low, but people can discuss stuff freely, which they wouldn't be able to if everything was buried under some GPT generated spam.
- codexon 2y ago
  A lot of people think 4chan is one of the last bastions of free speech on the internet because they see a lot of racism that would normally be banned anywhere else. But if you post something that goes against the alt-right that pisses them off too much and getting a lot of replies, it'll be deleted within minutes, or you'll even get banned for being "off topic". 4chan is not free speech, it is just a haven for the alt-right.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    They do have rules and the site is quite moderated. I do think though that any such site or platform will have the issue of judges inflecting their bias in their application of the rules. So I wouldn't say that it is a unique phenomenon. That said, of course there is a semantic as well as technical identity to 4chan. And they are quite connected, rather than isolated. 4chan, apart from its lax rules on what we now call hate speech, has developed a community where insults are now part of its culture. The fact that the site is anonymous greatly influences that animosity. I like to think of 4chan not as a place where horrible people go, but where people go to be horrible. Of course you have the dedicated users, neets or schizos or chronically online, but again that's a propery of every site, and not necessarily a majority. So if you read /pol/ or /b/ like articles of an organization with an editorial line, sure you will see nazis and a deranged group of people. If you however see it like bathroom wall writings, you will see a bit of everyone.