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4chan: Beyond one billion
- zitterbewegung 14y agoI personally like that 4 chan has done so well. I didn't expect that it did as well as it has. Also, I like moot's position on anonymous identify.
- DigitalSea 14y agoConsidering the somewhat objective nature of a lot of 4chan's content I am surprised it is where it is now. Very interesting article, I really enjoyed reading the history behind 4chan, will be interesting to see where the site heads next.
- risratorn 14y agoMoot really deserves praise for sticking around for 8 years and keeping the site running. I can imagine a lot of people giving up after a couple of years.
- brador 14y agoAnyone know 4chans main revenue streams? How's he paying for all that hosting? Donations?
- Sodaware 14y agoI'm pretty sure it all comes from advertising.
- Xymak1y 14y agoQuote from the article: Yet somehow we made it into 2009, and things began to look up. Long plagued by an inability to attract mainstream advertising, I partnered with an individual who took over representing 4chan's ad inventory, and for the first time in years the site began to break even.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoMuch of it Adult, too, since it is, well, 4chan.
- zumth 14y ago4chan is not only /b/ and porn, there are surprisingly good SFW boards too. Well, maybe "SFW" is pushing it a bit, since the tone is still 4-chaney, but then look around the technology, cooking, or traditionnal games boards: you'll be surprised.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoOh, I'm well aware of that. /b/ is (arguably) the worst part of 4chan. 4chan has much more than porn, but it also has a lot of porn.
- brudgers 14y agoThe world wide web has much more than porn, but it also has a lot of porn. This was also true of Usenet.
- nateberkopec 14y ago/sp/ is honestly one of the funniest places on the internet.
- ionwake 14y agoi would say government at a guess
- clockstrikesten 14y agoThe site owner recently revealed he pushes 3500000 GB per month. My lowball estimate puts that at roughly $77,000 per month, just under a million dollars per year to keep the site running. There are no ads on /b/, which is the main board, representing I'd guess 95% of the entire site's traffic. That, combined with the plausibility of the following, leads me to believe he receives massive government subsidies: http://i.imgur.com/Dyo66.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Dyo66.jpg
- greenranger 14y agoThat place is WACKO.
- charliesome 14y agoI think $77k might be overshooting the mark a bit. I once ran a site that pushed about 40TB a month (about 1% of 4chan) and it cost me $100/month to run. If you extrapolate that figure out (ignoring the fact that bandwidth gets cheaper the more you use), 4chan could cost as little as $10k a month to run.
- fragmede 14y agoAccording to http://content.4chan.org/tmp/extensions.html http://content.4chan.org/tmp/extensions.html they did 1.65 only petabytes for the month of June 2012, so where are you getting your 3.5 PB number from? Additionally, https://www.cloudflare.com/plans https://www.cloudflare.com/plans seem to suggest the bulk of that costs an unbelievably low $3k/month.
- ovi256 14y agoIf the allegations in the screenshot you posted are true (tl;dr: since 2008, the /b/ board is run by law enforcement as a sting operation), several prosecutions would have already run their course in the four years since the alleged start of the sting operation. Court decisions being open and including the details of the sting, we would have heard about it, wouldn't we? I think the press would have had a field day with that.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoAs I was reading that post, I was screaming "moot, make a questions board!". And then he actually revealed he was making /q/. Heh.
- jeffool 14y agoThe thing that strikes me is how... Ubiquitous as it is, and at the same time, unknown to so many more. "Browsing 4chan" truly is the "reading Rolling Stone magazine" of its day. And somehow, it retains that while being huge. I say this as someone fired for visiting it[1], and finding it impossible to get a job in the news industry a year later. Now, the news industry is hardly considered cutting edge, but people hear "now, the site has pornography, but-" and that's it. (Especially in this employer's market!) Conversely, I applied to two tech companies over the past year, and being forthcoming as I am, I share this with them. Both were mystified at my being fired for visiting 4chan. ("What? Where do you LIVE?") [1] I found out about the site from news coverage years ago (the NFL thing; "Don't mess with football!".) As Anonymous rose, it became interesting from a news standpoint. And yes, I casually just visited as well. I understand many consider this fire-able, and don't argue. That's kind of my point though, that divide.
- dnpfwfyuta 14y agoDid you get fired for browsing it at work, or because they found out you browse it at home?
- jeffool 14y agoAt work. Sorry if that was unclear; I didn't mean to be.
- Paul_S 14y agoI would be surprised if there wasn't an overlap between HN and 4chan (same as with SA). Being run in diametrically opposed way it fills its role rather well, I think. There is no reputation system, no limits, no censorship, etc.. This means it produces many utterly vile posts - but all of them are true expressions of people as they are, not as they pretend to be. I think people often don't appreciate this. It's not just people being dicks on the Internet, it's people saying what they think with no regard to social acceptance or basic politeness. And since there are no credentials, your posts are just that - some text and images conveying ideas. The only authority comes from the content. Here's to another billion.
- dhimes 14y agoI read somewhere that sociologists are fascinated by 4chan.
- crusso 14y ago... and monkeys flinging poo.
- jgrahamc 14y ago"This means it produces many utterly vile posts - but all of them are true expressions of people as they are, not as they pretend to be." I'm not sure that that really makes sense. I can be very charming or utterly vile. Are you implying that I'm only truly me when I'm vile (for example)? Aren't we all pretending all the time?
- Paul_S 14y agoNot all posts there are vile or inane (but many are and I don't think you dispute that). I'm just saying you get to see the full gamut (like you say people have many aspects to them), rather than just the polite, self-censored (for good reason) conversation we get on HN (this isn't a complaint about HN, I'd hate it if it was any other way). So you do get the usual hate speech, but you also get inside stories because people feel free to say things there that would probably get shut down even on a reddit AMA.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- m_for_monkey 14y agoI'm sure the guy regularly used Google too...
- devcpp 14y ago4Chan is known for this: it has the best and the worst of the Internet. After some time lurking, your brain acquires the skill of filtering threads that it thinks are worthless, without even polling your consciousness. As you develop this ability, you learn to appreciate the best in 4Chan, and it's really good. I don't know anyone else from there but as far as I'm concerned, I am a normal person in everyday life and I never mention it. I just want to have a good time when I am bored, like many users there. So it's important to try to filter the content. This site is rather unique for letting users do almost whatever they want without consequences. Some people abuse it but they won't waste it for me: the dogs bark and the caravan goes on.
- Swizec 14y agoWhile I no longer visit 4chan regularly, I love its extensive influence on human society. * lolcats * rage comics * anonymous * a lot of the 1% movement * getting random people in jail because they think animal cruelty is funny * making Moot TIME's person of the year and getting him a TED talk -> http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online.html http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for... While most of what goes on there hinges somewhere between vile and horrible. 4chan has a lot of good in it, plenty of times there can be surprisingly good and high quality debates. And come on, it's where all the memes are born. That's profound. What other startup can claim to be such a big influence on western society? PS: 4chan has also invented a clever sorting algorithm - http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1295544154 http://dis.4chan.org/read/prog/1295544154 PPS: sometimes they even manage to count to 10. I think the record was 100. edit: when I say meme, I mean "A meme ( /ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena." ... I don't mean, "funny picture". A lot of responders misunderstood this, I think.
- rockyleal 14y agoI like your post so this is a real question, not a sarcastic remark: Can you elaborate about why you consider memes profound?
- AndrewDucker 14y agoI don't think memes are profound, but I do think that having this crucible in which new memes are created, with the best spreading from there to the rest of the internet via Tumblr, Facebook, etc. is pretty awe inspiring.
- Swizec 14y agoMemes are profound because they are our culture. It is what the "young people of today" do. In the 50's they had rock-and-roll, in the 60's it was hippies and so on. Right now, it's the internet. In just a few more years all of us will become "the old guys" and our younger brothers and sisters will come up with something new - my sister already thinks I'm lame for liking the internet so much and sharing silly pictures and stuff. And she doesn't understand why cats are so cool. She's only 7 years younger. The thing is, you have to look at memes in a broader sense than just "picture of X with something written on top and on bottom in big bold text". Yes, that's what some people call a "meme" these days, but I mean them more in the sense of a cultural parcel that is distributed between people in a common-ish medium. I remember in primary school one of the memes (called fads back then) was that everyone suddenly started using yo-yos. Anyone who was between 10 and 14 had a yoyo and you could instantly connect with them, there was instantly something to talk about. Etc. But here's the real kicker, the memes of today are the first in history that are trully global. And without delay. It took almost 10 years for hippies to arrive in my neck of the woods and they were never pretty big. Punk was a big quicker, it had a delay of only a few years. Modern culture, mostly the memes, has zero delay. And that's amazing.
- rnernento 14y agoOP IS A FAG. inb4 this is hacker news not 4chan inb4 be polite
- rnernento 14y agoAhahah so much hate, def rustled some jimmies.
- mproud 14y agoBLOCKED! (At work.) Not that I expected any differently, of course, heheh.
- wtracy 14y agoWow. My employer's content filter blocks Phoronix, but still lets 4chan through. I have no words.
- path411 14y agoAnyone able to paste the text? I'd rather not visit the 4chan domain while at work.
- bandwevil 14y agoHere you go. http://pastehtml.com/view/c7fxyfuan.html http://pastehtml.com/view/c7fxyfuan.html
- january14n 14y agoCongratulations to 4chan, I find their facebook campaign helps pretty well for making their community bigger.
- ghiculescu 14y agoWow, nice. Many years ago I rewrote the 4chan wikipedia article, and got it to featured level. It appeared on the Main Page a few years later, but by then I had lost interest. It's nice to see it's still in good shape, though not as popular as the site itself - http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/4chan http://stats.grok.se/en/latest90/4chan