7 ms·

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.
    - codexon 2y ago
      There were no rules broken. Actually they selectively ignore the rule against racism as long as it is aligned with alt-right, and not just the pol board now. https://4chan.org/rules https://4chan.org/rules 3. You will not post any of the following outside of /b/: b. Racism The political bias of the moderators on the website have been documented by others. https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-helped-turn-4chan-into-the-internets-racist-engine/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-helped-turn-4cha... They selectively censor any opposing views that rile them too hard or they can't easily refute, so it is not equivalent to bathroom scribbles. Recent example just found today (not my post). https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg
      - throw1574236 2y ago
        >https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg That thread is about the Spanish movie "La piel que habito,"[0] and that OP post is actually describing the plot, it's not even a political post. So bringing up American Republicans out of nowhere is quite off topic. Strange how you conveniently cropped out the title and image that ostensibly showed this. Is this the best you can do? [0] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_piel_que_habito https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_piel_que_habito
        codexon 2y ago
        It's not entirely unrelated to the discussion and I guarantee you if someone said something aligned with alt-right, instead it would not have been censored. Examples https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206317377/ https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206317377/ https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206526786/#q206527439 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206526786/#q206527439 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206199053/#q206200223 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206199053/#q206200223 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206521664/#q206526548 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206521664/#q206526548
      - TZubiri 2y ago
        An article about 4chan from left media is something I won't read. Not a boomer, I can actually read 4chan anyways and make my own mind. Image related is unfortunate. Not uncommon for jannies and mods in any website to use their power to self serve. It happens even in more serious and regulated sites like wikipedia, so I'm not surprised by the lack of moderation neutrality in a meme site.
  - throw1574236 2y ago
    This is not true. You can go to /v/ right now and see tons of pro black/trans in video games posters, and /lgbt/ is one of the largest boards on the site at 12th place by avg. posts per day.[0] Here are 3 /v/ threads I found in less than 5 seconds that are "pro woke": 1. 696014001 OP: >Face it, it’s going to be a BG3 situation. Everyone will screech about it being woke, play it, then 6 months later everyone will say “no one called it woke, what are you talking about?” 2. 696014873 OP: >If Japanese people are so based and anti-woke then why is this so popular in nipland? [pic of otokonoko game in image] 3. 696016309 OP: >>9999 games cater to cis men, 1 doesn't >>THIS IS LITERALLY GENOCIDE (Two of these threads I found by searching the word "woke" in the catalog. The first was the first thread when I opened the page.) In fact, these types of threads are against the rules,[1] but /v/ is somewhat evenly split between liberals and anti-liberals and liberals make these threads all day and can be seen in replies as well. They even have their own terms, eg. "Grumzcord Raid" "Grifter thread" etc. And if you knew anything about the mods and janitors you would know many are far from alt-right. My guess is you went to /g/ and started making blatant political threads and got banned. Note that both sides get banned for blatant off topic political posts. Do you have any examples of posts you were banned for? [0] https://4stats.io/ https://4stats.io/ [1] rules#v §3 - "Threads should not devolve into flamewars. Instigating or encouraging such activity will not be tolerated."
    - codexon 2y ago
      The mods won't ban or delete 1 off posts that don't get any traction. And I'm talking about pol, the #1 board on the site by activity. And no I don't visit g, if I wanted some discussion about technology I'd rather use this website instead. I'm not going to show any of my own examples for privacy purposes, and no doubt you will probably find some way to nit pick at those.
      - throw1574236 2y ago
        >mods won't ban or delete 1 off posts that don't get any traction Janitors don't delete posts that they don't see or are not reported. >I'm talking about pol, the #1 board on the site by activity. /vg/ is neck and neck with /pol/, and that's only because /v/ was split into /v/ and /vg/. And yeah, if you don't give any examples it's hard to take you seriously. The example you did give was egregiously OT, and in fact potentially thread-derailing. The fact that you saw that as an example of janitors being unfair puts your credibility into question. I showed that liberal opinions are allowed and even common on 4chan, which was your initial point. I don't browse /pol/ but I found liberal threads pretty easily here as well: 490048710 (99 replies) OP: >Calmly explain why pissing off these countries [in OP pic] will result in untold riches for the working class [countries are China, Canada and Mexico, in reference to Trump's tariffs] 490048788 (103 replies) OP: >Is Trump the last gasp of a dying empire? >He's going hard, threatening every country in the world with huge tariffs and massive retaliation if they use currencies other than the US dollar. It's rather absurd. [post continues for another 3 paragraphs] I don't think 4chan is necessarily a bastion of free speech. Twitter is probably more free in terms on what you can post now. However 4chan is nothing like Reddit, old twitter, YouTube etc. in terms of what you can post.
  - WeylandYutani 2y ago
    No politics and news is just one board. You can go to 4chan to discuss more important things such as videogames.
    - codexon 2y ago
      Its not just the pol board as I showed in my other comments. I don't use the videogame board so I do not know if anti alt-right comments there get deleted, but I find it hard to believe that anybody is going to be emotionally invested enough to delete posts that say "game X is going to succeed even when it is woke". From a random search it looks like there's a lot of racist or alt-right aligned political comments there that never get deleted though.
sky2224 2y ago
The thing is, addressing the spam and also allowing users to have a low friction experience would be the first step to addressing the concerns you mentioned (without compromising the purpose of the site: anonymous and totally free speech). There aren't many places for the people that share the views you mentioned to go other than sites like 4chan, so even though there's an awful captcha, they're going to be quite dedicated as they don't have many mainstream options elsewhere. I believe if users were able to have a frictionless experience, then it'd reduce the chances of someone throwing their hands up in the air and saying, "this isn't worth it". I've actually attempted to reply to threads to challenge the views of others, but once I'm hit with the 300-1000 second wait time to post, I just close the tab and move on.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
krmboya 2y ago
> Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. Isn't that more easily solved by just not visiting the site in the first place?
- tovej 2y ago
  This problem is a societal one, it mostly harms you indirectly by creating spaces for hateful ideas to spread, 4chan's harm is through the capacity to organize and strengthen hateful and harmful political movements. More socially conscious people not visiting the site only serves to create a stronger echo chamber.
  - ranger_danger 2y ago
    This is how oppression starts. First it's "let's only get rid of the most offensive content", then "let's suppress opinions we don't like".
    - tovej 2y ago
      Would you please tell me one example where oppression has started with criticizing nazis.
      - ranger_danger 2y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
        tovej 2y ago
        This is an armed resistance group, not an academic clique, and the violence was a reaction to attacks (e.g. beatings, assassination attempt). It's also not an example of oppression, even though it is violent.
    - aguaviva 2y ago
skotobaza 2y ago
That's the price you pay for ability to freely and anonymously voice different opinions. And even then 4chan is considered "soft", because mods still delete some egregiously "incorrect" opinions.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

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.
  - codexon 2y ago
    There were no rules broken. Actually they selectively ignore the rule against racism as long as it is aligned with alt-right, and not just the pol board now. https://4chan.org/rules https://4chan.org/rules 3. You will not post any of the following outside of /b/: b. Racism The political bias of the moderators on the website have been documented by others. https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-helped-turn-4chan-into-the-internets-racist-engine/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-man-who-helped-turn-4cha... They selectively censor any opposing views that rile them too hard or they can't easily refute, so it is not equivalent to bathroom scribbles. Recent example just found today (not my post). https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg
    - throw1574236 2y ago
      >https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/0Xkslke.jpeg That thread is about the Spanish movie "La piel que habito,"[0] and that OP post is actually describing the plot, it's not even a political post. So bringing up American Republicans out of nowhere is quite off topic. Strange how you conveniently cropped out the title and image that ostensibly showed this. Is this the best you can do? [0] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_piel_que_habito https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_piel_que_habito
      - codexon 2y ago
        It's not entirely unrelated to the discussion and I guarantee you if someone said something aligned with alt-right, instead it would not have been censored. Examples https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206317377/ https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206317377/ https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206526786/#q206527439 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206526786/#q206527439 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206199053/#q206200223 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206199053/#q206200223 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206521664/#q206526548 https://archive.4plebs.org/tv/thread/206521664/#q206526548
    - TZubiri 2y ago
      An article about 4chan from left media is something I won't read. Not a boomer, I can actually read 4chan anyways and make my own mind. Image related is unfortunate. Not uncommon for jannies and mods in any website to use their power to self serve. It happens even in more serious and regulated sites like wikipedia, so I'm not surprised by the lack of moderation neutrality in a meme site.
- throw1574236 2y ago
  This is not true. You can go to /v/ right now and see tons of pro black/trans in video games posters, and /lgbt/ is one of the largest boards on the site at 12th place by avg. posts per day.[0] Here are 3 /v/ threads I found in less than 5 seconds that are "pro woke": 1. 696014001 OP: >Face it, it’s going to be a BG3 situation. Everyone will screech about it being woke, play it, then 6 months later everyone will say “no one called it woke, what are you talking about?” 2. 696014873 OP: >If Japanese people are so based and anti-woke then why is this so popular in nipland? [pic of otokonoko game in image] 3. 696016309 OP: >>9999 games cater to cis men, 1 doesn't >>THIS IS LITERALLY GENOCIDE (Two of these threads I found by searching the word "woke" in the catalog. The first was the first thread when I opened the page.) In fact, these types of threads are against the rules,[1] but /v/ is somewhat evenly split between liberals and anti-liberals and liberals make these threads all day and can be seen in replies as well. They even have their own terms, eg. "Grumzcord Raid" "Grifter thread" etc. And if you knew anything about the mods and janitors you would know many are far from alt-right. My guess is you went to /g/ and started making blatant political threads and got banned. Note that both sides get banned for blatant off topic political posts. Do you have any examples of posts you were banned for? [0] https://4stats.io/ https://4stats.io/ [1] rules#v §3 - "Threads should not devolve into flamewars. Instigating or encouraging such activity will not be tolerated."
  - codexon 2y ago
    The mods won't ban or delete 1 off posts that don't get any traction. And I'm talking about pol, the #1 board on the site by activity. And no I don't visit g, if I wanted some discussion about technology I'd rather use this website instead. I'm not going to show any of my own examples for privacy purposes, and no doubt you will probably find some way to nit pick at those.
    - throw1574236 2y ago
      >mods won't ban or delete 1 off posts that don't get any traction Janitors don't delete posts that they don't see or are not reported. >I'm talking about pol, the #1 board on the site by activity. /vg/ is neck and neck with /pol/, and that's only because /v/ was split into /v/ and /vg/. And yeah, if you don't give any examples it's hard to take you seriously. The example you did give was egregiously OT, and in fact potentially thread-derailing. The fact that you saw that as an example of janitors being unfair puts your credibility into question. I showed that liberal opinions are allowed and even common on 4chan, which was your initial point. I don't browse /pol/ but I found liberal threads pretty easily here as well: 490048710 (99 replies) OP: >Calmly explain why pissing off these countries [in OP pic] will result in untold riches for the working class [countries are China, Canada and Mexico, in reference to Trump's tariffs] 490048788 (103 replies) OP: >Is Trump the last gasp of a dying empire? >He's going hard, threatening every country in the world with huge tariffs and massive retaliation if they use currencies other than the US dollar. It's rather absurd. [post continues for another 3 paragraphs] I don't think 4chan is necessarily a bastion of free speech. Twitter is probably more free in terms on what you can post now. However 4chan is nothing like Reddit, old twitter, YouTube etc. in terms of what you can post.
- WeylandYutani 2y ago
  No politics and news is just one board. You can go to 4chan to discuss more important things such as videogames.
  - codexon 2y ago
    Its not just the pol board as I showed in my other comments. I don't use the videogame board so I do not know if anti alt-right comments there get deleted, but I find it hard to believe that anybody is going to be emotionally invested enough to delete posts that say "game X is going to succeed even when it is woke". From a random search it looks like there's a lot of racist or alt-right aligned political comments there that never get deleted though.

sky2224 2y ago

The thing is, addressing the spam and also allowing users to have a low friction experience would be the first step to addressing the concerns you mentioned (without compromising the purpose of the site: anonymous and totally free speech). There aren't many places for the people that share the views you mentioned to go other than sites like 4chan, so even though there's an awful captcha, they're going to be quite dedicated as they don't have many mainstream options elsewhere. I believe if users were able to have a frictionless experience, then it'd reduce the chances of someone throwing their hands up in the air and saying, "this isn't worth it". I've actually attempted to reply to threads to challenge the views of others, but once I'm hit with the 300-1000 second wait time to post, I just close the tab and move on.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

krmboya 2y ago

> Not the rampant racism or sexism or simple misanthropy or outright calls to violence or overflowing hostility. Isn't that more easily solved by just not visiting the site in the first place?

tovej 2y ago
This problem is a societal one, it mostly harms you indirectly by creating spaces for hateful ideas to spread, 4chan's harm is through the capacity to organize and strengthen hateful and harmful political movements. More socially conscious people not visiting the site only serves to create a stronger echo chamber.
- ranger_danger 2y ago
  This is how oppression starts. First it's "let's only get rid of the most offensive content", then "let's suppress opinions we don't like".
  - tovej 2y ago
    Would you please tell me one example where oppression has started with criticizing nazis.
    - ranger_danger 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
      - tovej 2y ago
        This is an armed resistance group, not an academic clique, and the violence was a reaction to attacks (e.g. beatings, assassination attempt). It's also not an example of oppression, even though it is violent.
  - aguaviva 2y ago

skotobaza 2y ago

That's the price you pay for ability to freely and anonymously voice different opinions. And even then 4chan is considered "soft", because mods still delete some egregiously "incorrect" opinions.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]