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4chan Sharty Hack And Janitor Email Leak

wickedsight 1y ago
This makes me wonder whether there's anything in there that can point to the identity of the original QAnon. That would be a pretty interesting outcome.
- swarnie 1y ago
  Aren't we 99% sure that was a Ron Watkins grift now?
  - wickedsight 1y ago
    That's why I wrote 'the original'. It's very possible Watkins took control after Q moved from 4Chan to 8Chan from what I've read. I'm far from fully up-to-date on this saga though.
    - AnnaRiot 1y ago
      I am pretty sure Q was originally started by the guys behind Cicada3301 before Ron took over
      - Wobbles42 1y ago
        This is a genuinely interesting assertion. Is there any evidence of this?
- ribosometronome 1y ago
  Given the nature of the hackers and their immediate actions, it seems unlikely they would reveal that sort of information.
- Borgz 1y ago
  4chan doesn't store threads for very long, hence the plethora of third-party archive sites. I doubt they are still storing any useful data from back then.
CamelCaseName 1y ago
If you lamented the disappearance of the "old internet", well, this was a part of it, and now it may be gone too. The title is also a fair bit understated. They're leaking the moderators home addresses and work contact info (for admins, who are(were?) paid moderators)
- robobro 1y ago
  The initial leaker is most likely not the same parties as the ones tying email addresses and usernames to people's "real identities", if you look at the thread where the leak was announced. Say what you will about 4chan but I am concerned for the team managing it - them and their close ones are certainly going to be exposed to a whole lot of viciousness soon :(
  - pjc50 1y ago
    > them and their close ones are certainly going to be exposed to a whole lot of viciousness soon Isn't viciousness the notorious bread and butter of 4chan?
    - morkalork 1y ago
      Live by the sword, die by the sword I would say. You don't get to enjoy raising leopards and also get to be surprised when you become lunch one day
      - brookst 1y ago
        They certainly don’t get to claim any kind of moral high ground, but as a bystander I can feel empathy for someone hit by a drunk driver, even if the victim had driven drunk before in the past. Any increase in human suffering is unfortunate, regardless of one’s take on just desserts or karma or whatever.
        soVeryTired 1y ago
        I’d say it’s more like a high-profile NRA member getting shot. Unfortunate but it’s hard to miss the irony.
deadbabe 1y ago
[flagged]
cbg0 1y ago
Hosting a copy of phpMyAdmin behind basic HTTP authentication in 2025 really is asking for it.
- jsheard 1y ago
  I was kinda surprised to see that phpMyAdmin is still maintained, albeit only barely. The last release was in January but before that it hadn't been touched for over two years.
  - pelagicAustral 1y ago
    This stuff is still packaged with cPanel, which is probably the most common way to manage web servers on the internet.
    - Macha 1y ago
      I wonder how long it's been since that was true. I think that era passed when most small businesses and individuals moved from self hosting to SaaS.
      - technion 1y ago
        Nearly every website developer servicing small business builds a WordPress site and sets it up on a hosting company's cPanel install with phpmyadmin running by default.
        jsheard 1y ago
        I guess those installs are the ones the Wordpress vuln scanners are looking for when they spam my server with /wp-admin/ requests.
        Macha 1y ago
        Which are far far outnumbered by people setting up squarespace sites, or shopify sites or facebook pages or twitter profiles these days. It was definitely true at one point that small scale indie web devs and small business contractors outnumbered big tech in both headcount and servers. I don't think that's been true for a while now.
trallnag 1y ago
Jannies had it coming tbh. They were certainly tightening the rope when it came to free speech in the last few years
- pjc50 1y ago
  Always curious to know what kind of speech this kind of complaint refers to.
  - krige 1y ago
    Free. In practice whatever a given janny doesn't like gets the boot. The moderation can get REALLY schizophrenic depending on time zone, and there are persistent rumors that certain boards are controlled by groups of interest (notably the cesspool known as /pol/ is very astroturfed).
    - giraffe_lady 1y ago
      Free isn't a kind of speech, it describes a condition under which speech is performed. Their question was what kind of speech is being alluded to.
      - krige 1y ago
        Their question was a gotcha attempt, and a misguided one at that, hence the answer specifically not playing along.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        giraffe_lady 1y ago
        Once you've made this many comments about it and are still unwilling to describe the acts you're defending I would certainly call that playing.
geriatric-janny 1y ago
My official association with 4chan ended in 2010, but I still recognise a good third of those names and would wager the leak is legit.
- delusional 1y ago
  What kind of official association could one have with 4chan? 4chan was formative for my early connection to the internet, and I'm really curious what the organization behind it looked like. Was it professionally driven, or just some random guy mailing checks? stuff like that.
  - no_time 1y ago
    Well... A full dump of the board exclusive to moderators and janitors was leaked too so now you could take a look yourself.
  - geriatric-janny 1y ago
    I lied about my age and was given janitor access in the mid 2000s. There was a special /j/ board to coordinate on, but it broke relatively early, and you mostly had to hang out in the #janiteam channel on Rizon. I think almost everybody else was underage as well. There was a minimal web overlay that let you delete/escalate posts. You couldn't see people's IPs, but you could see how many outstanding ban requests they had. These numbers helped me deduce that many boards' most infamous personalities were all the same guy. We were all offered the chance to become mods in 2010, but moot wanted to see our faces on a Skype call. I thought that was a step too far and just gradually stopped caring after that. Seems like I made the right choice. On the whole it was barely held together technically and organisationally, mostly run by moot's personal friends, and fun all around. Things were far less serious then. And the checks arrived on time every month: $0.00
    - delusional 1y ago
      Sounds about like what I would have expected as a (also underage) user at the time. The suspicion was always that most of the memorable joke chains were probably just one guy self-replying (I always suspected that was the case for the hunter2 meme specifically). It didn't really matter, it was funny anyway. Thanks for taking the time to reply, and thanks for the fun back then :)
SirFatty 1y ago
Surprised that the admins have any personal details associated with their 4chan profile.
OuterVale 1y ago
Posted link is a tad vulgar and scarce on information. A bit of a collection forming on The Sun's live blog post: Thousands of 4Chan users report issues accessing controversial website - https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/34472708/4chan-down-updates-controversial-website-hacking/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/34472708/4chan-down-updates-co...
- dang 1y ago
  (Posted link was originally https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked_hacker_reopens_qa_and_leaks_all/ https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked.... We since changed it.)
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  Why would you use the Sun as a source for anything
TheAceOfHearts 1y ago
There's a KnowYourMeme [0] post with additional details and context. Most interesting to me is finding out that there' s a word filer / transformer, so SMH becomes BAKA and TBH becomes DESU, as two examples. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/april-2025-4chan-hack https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/april-2025-4chan-hack
- tanjtanjtanj 1y ago
  Yep, it’s been that way for 20+ years! The term “weeaboo” as a term for western anime fans only came about because it was what the word “wapanese” filtered to. It was originally a nonsense work made up in a Perry Bible Fellowship comic.
- dang 1y ago
  That does seem to have more information, so I've changed the top url to that from https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked_hacker_reopens_qa_and_leaks_all/ https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked.... Thanks!
- FMecha 1y ago
  From what I heard, it was because they were tired of people posting "tbh fam". This does result in people instead posting "tbdesu" in being aware of the filter. A note that the filter for "doublechan" was never updated to include its current name, nor the place where this current attack originated was ever filtered, afaik.
swarnie 1y ago
One of the best websites on the internet. Hopefully not gone forever.
soygem 1y ago
[dead]
rootsudo 1y ago
Wow doxing the Jannies! I mean, wow, they’re doxing people that helped keep a legacy internet place alive and compliant with the law. Who would do that?
- masfuerte 1y ago
  The man.
- joseda-hg 1y ago
  Sound right up the alley for a 4chan user
- OhioMan2943 1y ago
  Whoever's trying their hardest to shut down the rest of the free internet as well. I do think these actions we've seen in the last 5 years are co-ordinated. Will post sources soon
  - Loughla 1y ago
    Please post sources. And what other sites are you talking about?
  - Alifatisk 1y ago
    > Will post sources soon When?
jmyeet 1y ago
4chan will be studied for years for its role in alt-right radicalization as well as being a baroemeter for young male discontent. For example, QAnon started on 4chan (I believe as a joke?) [1]. Nowadays a lot of 4chan users and traffic have since migrated to Twitter for pretty obvious reasons. Pseudo-intellectual racism has a lot of roots in 4chan (eg the popularity of Julius Evola [2]) that's deeply tied to "trad" content, Andrew Tate fandom, the manosphere and "self-improvement" [3]. Things like the Bored Ape Yacht Club originated on 4chan and it's full of racist memes [4]. A lot of racist and antisemitic memes originated on 4chan. Worst of all, it seems like Elon Musk is motivated by a deep desire to be liked by 4chan [5]. So the point is that 4chan users (and admins) have a lot of real-world influence and that's kinda scary. It also makes them a target for this kind of hack. I suspect a lot of people will be exposed by this and in more than a few cases, you'll find ties to the current administration. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-... [2]: https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-bronze-age-pervert https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-b... [3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00732-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00732-x [4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpH3O6mnZvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpH3O6mnZvw [5]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/6/how-musk-ushered-4chan-into-us-politics https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/6/how-musk-ushered...
- VectorLock 1y ago
  I would be 0% surprised to see Stephen Miller's information in this leak.
  - howmayiannoyyou 1y ago
    If you're looking for malign influence on 4chan - look outside the US. Anyone on /pol/ and /k/ after Oct 7th understands clearly who has been influencing if not controlling the site.
    - reverius42 1y ago
      I think it's the other way around; keen observers have noticed a 4chan influence on the US Government's policies.
WindowsDev 1y ago
Is the source code which leaked everything one would need to host their own copy of the site?
- technion 1y ago
  There are tonnes of open source clones on github, source code to run the site is nothing special. You still need users.
  - joseda-hg 1y ago
    Might I add, 4chan's implementation isn't even particularly good one
    - johnnyjeans 1y ago
      Nah I disagree. It's the best one. All of the extra shit other boards have just feels like needless bloat. Honestly the JS extension they added like 10 years ago is a bit much.
- kaiokendev 1y ago
  The site has an API for reading posts [0]. It works (worked?) quite well. For making posts, you'd need to write your own functionality that forwards the CAPTCHA and post timers. [0]: https://github.com/4chan/4chan-API https://github.com/4chan/4chan-API
- PaulRobinson 1y ago
  No, you'll need servers and enough network capacity to handle the load, an understanding and supportive hosting provider, a law degree or enough money to pay somebody with one to keep you out of court/jail/prison, a network of degenerates to provide traffic and content and/or a copy of the existing 4chan content, a stomach of steel to deal with the content moderation duties, and a moral compass so warped you think hosting degrading and illegal content is "just liberalism and freedom of speech" and not something that needs a second thought by any right-minded person. But sure, if you have all that and the source code, you're all set. Godspeed!
no_time 1y ago
Not the first time this has happened, and probably not the last. I hope they bounce back from this like they did before. It's a special place.
scryers_bloom 1y ago
We've heard it time and time again that 4chan is the so called "last bastion of free speech on the internet" when this so called free speech is just being unapologetically racist and antisemitic. I hope its gone for good.
- blacktits69 1y ago
  you think these are akin to endangered species? these are humans collectivizing and cloaking under maladaptive pretenses. you're advocating for empowering polio because it is life and deserves a chance.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  Halfchan's likely been around longer than you have and will just as likely remain around long after you're gone
  - scryers_bloom 1y ago
    That's fine, I don't really expect a 22 year old site with generational backup storage to actually go down forever. I'm 23, so I got them beat!
- y-curious 1y ago
  I, too, prefer to see my vulgar memes served by an AI algorithm alongside ads. Sooooo much better! /s
- kittikitti 1y ago
  Yes, and everywhere else people have to worry about being deported for pointing out Israel's war crimes. At least no one needed to worry about that on 4Chan, but seeing an anonymous racist meme is even worse for people like you.
  - scryers_bloom 1y ago
    That is a completely separate problem, and it's dishonest making the comparison. Extremist right wing ideology and genocide is actively advocated on /pol/ as well as anti-Jewish rhetoric. Neo-nazism is not pointing out Israel's war crimes, and pointing out Israel's war crimes is not neo-nazism or anti-Jewish. /pol/ isn't antisemitic for Israel's genocide; they just hate Jewish people. The Trump administration trying to deport people for doing so is also unjustified. People are freely criticizing Israel on other popular social media (notably TikTok and Instagram) without inciting a modern neo-nazi and right wing movement like what has happened on 4chan in the past 10 years.
yapyap 1y ago
Hacker named 4chan hacks 4chan
Red_Tarsius 1y ago
I feel too many people conflate /pol/ with the whole website. I enjoyed browsing through sfw boards like /tg/ (tabletop media), /ck/ (cooking) and /fit/ (fitness). I had long discussions about the SW sequels on /tv/ back in 2015-19. The readership was surprisingly diverse and the anonymity lead users to provide more focused replies. With bodybuilding.com gone, the blue boards felt like the last bastion of the old internet.
- MattDemers 1y ago
  I think people also don't acknowledge how much terminology, slang and other culture originate and spread there. When it breaches into Twitter (usually through funposters) people kind of ignore the unsavoury origin and rewrite the history. The anonymous nature kind of provides that petri dish of "if it's strong culture, it'll survive or be modified."
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Don't forget the slurs. They have some unique slurs in there that have backstories too.
  - thih9 1y ago
    > how much terminology, slang and other culture originate and spread there Could you give some examples? The more unexpected, the better. Preferably with sources, because tracing word origin is difficult enough on its own.
    - boyesm 1y ago
      Moot lists some examples in this video: https://youtu.be/a_1UEAGCo30?si=JMVO5ox3K2AhxrMY&t=97 https://youtu.be/a_1UEAGCo30?si=JMVO5ox3K2AhxrMY&t=97
    - dmonitor 1y ago
      Wiktionary has a surprisingly robust list https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_4chan_slang https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_4chan_slang
bedane 1y ago
[flagged]
brigandish 1y ago
I see a lot of hate for 4chan here. Why? I’ve never used it, know it by reputation, but not sure why there’s so much hate for it.
- wegfawefgawefg 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
    Certainly has nothing to do with the toxic userbase of at least some of the boards
    - wegfawefgawefg 1y ago
      I bet you 90% of the haters have never even been to the website.
      - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
        i don't know why you'd bet that
        wegfawefgawefg 1y ago
        because my religious redneck family thinks 4chan is a bunch of hackers who hate the elderly because fox news mentioned "ok boomer" meme once. because ive met many people in real life who think its evil but have never been on it or have even seen it. every normie hates 4chan, but none of them have never been there.
- Philpax 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Controversies_and_harassment_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Controversies_and_harass...
gherkinnn 1y ago
You know, I always found Twitter (even pre-X) to be worse than 4chan ever was. Not in obvious terms, but in how it fucked with your head.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago
  This is a pretty good take! It's because you could verbally attack and fight the 4chan idiots with a swarm of common sense and be lauded for doing that job. Doing the same on X will just get you banned for whatever reason Elon feels is best 'for the community'.
  - lesbolasinc 1y ago
    I dont understand why twitter is so prevalent in the tech community; and it's not like you can just 'not use it' - you are at a true disadvantage if you aren't on twitter because of how much discourse around new tech, private equity, etc transpires on it. I'm surprised a literal echo-chamber in which free speech is suppressed for disagreeing with the party line is responsible for so much productivity because of how many techbros are active on it. What happened to the time where being a techbro meant you were an open source libertarian like Stallman?
    - mlsu 1y ago
      I think that’s just an artifact of twitter’s history. It was “normal” (increasingly algorithm slop driven) website until roughly 1-2 years ago when it was bought out and became maga slop. Remember twitter came out in like 2007 when only tech people were on the internet.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - username332211 1y ago
      The feedback mechanism on Twitter allows you to find useful discussions of current affairs in less popular topics. Can you find a good discussion of current events in agribusiness on Reddit? No. On Facebook? No. But if you open up Twitter and search for Arthur Daniels and you'll find something useful. So, when the manager at a company wants to publicize, he has nowhere else to go. > I'm surprised a literal echo-chamber in which free speech is suppressed for disagreeing with the party line is responsible for so much productivity because of how many techbros are active on it. Reddit is worse. Facebook is worse. Bluesky is a community that couldn't stand Twitter changing it's party line, so it's worse. Mastodon is complex and suffers from the same problems as Bluesky. Like it or not, Musk did choose his acquisition well.
underseacables 1y ago
I have been to 4chan maybe 4 times in my life. The first was like ok.. Then I visited /b and LOL'd for a couple of hours. Then it just got redundant and depressing. It really is the arsehole of the internet, but some people seem to find it useful.
- Blikkentrekker 1y ago
  > but some people seem to find it useful. Honestly, it filled a very specific hole for me that I found nowhere else. Everyone is talking about the “unfiltered content” and all those things but to me it was mostly just topical. It was really one of the few places where one could get a good discussion on the internet about Japanese female-oriented entertainment which I'm well aware isn't the first thing people think about with 4chan but pretty much every other forum about Japanese entertainment is completely dominated by male-oriented entertainment, except when they go out of their way to specifically make a board catered to female-oriented entertainment, but that has the side effect that people on those boards end up talking more about gender politics than about the entertainment itself and I just want to talk about my favorite television shows and comic books and really don't care about all the politics. 4chan by it's nature doesn't drown out minority tastes and voices. This really isn't just a “female-oriented entertainment” thing but really any minority taste that just gets drowned out on most boards to the point that it disappears. The only other place I know where one can do this is Tumblr, more or less, but it's a very different experience, not necessarily better or worse but there just isn't this kind of “live discussion” atmosphere and vibe going on on Tumblr about episodes that are currently airing where people post small comments as the episode is airing and they're watching it. It's more for long impressions after it was aired and it doesn't have the same degree of interaction, it's a blogging place, not a message board. As said, it isn't just that but “obscure taste” in general. You can make a thread on 4chan about some really obscure piece of fiction that no one knows and get a discussion going, half with the people that do it know, in part because it's an imageboard so they're drawn in to an image they recognize and it stands out, and half with people that never heard of it before, see the images in the thread, see it looks interesting and try it out. The images are the key I feel, it lowers the barrier of entry for people to try out something obscure because they see the images which lures them in. It was one of the best places to get a discussion going about some obscure piece of fiction which Tumblr doesn't do either, the only things that are being discussed are the really big titles. There are so many relatively obscure titles I enjoy I will possibly never get to discuss with anyone in my life again if 4chan not come back. I know many of those titles from 4chan because people constantly promote and share fairly obscure things there and the images again sell it.
shipscode 1y ago
The take on 4chan on here is super intriguing. I always felt that the current social media/doomscroll/memesharing landscape which has become so common worldwide is indiscernable and in some ways worse than 4chan. It feels like 4chan left it's homepage and went worldwide sometime in the early 2010s when iPhone-style phone use became more commonplace. I remember that 4chan users had more honor than users on the internet today. One example would be 4Chan's "Not your personal army" mentality vs. the widespread doxxing/"call their place of employment!" witch hunts, driven by huge accounts on IG/Tiktok/etc, that hit normal people daily. The modern social media landscape has become far more hectic, harmful, and downright scary than 4chan. Dodging explicit imagery is harder on Instagram's explore page than on 4chan, and the widespread popularization of OF creators has zero bounds across the socials. DOXXING is no longer frowned upon and now commonplace. And memes have become less unique and funny and more commoditized.
- gtirloni 1y ago
  Isn't that the path that most platforms follow once they get mildly popular?
- amadeuspagel 1y ago
  "Not your personal army" goes father then not doxxing. It's a rejection of any attempt to imagine a community of strangers, united by hatred of a scapegoat.
  - shadowgovt 1y ago
    If someone rallied a hate-mob on 4chan, though, how would people know? Since 4chan overtly resists it, it'd rapidly move off of there, but it's still a great place to find like-minded folks that'd follow someone to another server to go brigade someone.
    - Klonoar 1y ago
      4chan has always claimed to resist it, but 4chan was never immune to being shuffled a specific way.
cobson 1y ago
gem
- sensanaty 1y ago
  no coal to be found here
- soygem 1y ago
  [dead]
greazy 1y ago
4chan is a reflection of the depraved, extreme side of humanity. Twitter has taken on the mantle of 'asshole of the internet', but I think the rotten apples post in both. 4chan is oddly accepting of gay and trans people. I've seen gay and trans porn side by side with bbc and bwc porn posts. Strange to see racist trans porn lovers. I like 4chan for the minor boards, not /pol/ or /b/. But /boardgames/ and /dyi/ and /international/. The absurd humor, green texts that make absolutely no sense, or ones that lead down a strange and wonderful path. I like being anonymous on the internet.
- Blikkentrekker 1y ago
  > 4chan is oddly accepting of gay and trans people. I've seen gay and trans porn side by side with bbc and bwc porn posts. Strange to see racist trans porn lovers. It only seems odd because many people interpret this through a U.S.A. “culture war” lens and “gay people”. You believe they're “accepting of gay people” in the sense of that culture war because of the “gay porn”. In reality, they take more of a classical Graeco-Roman approach to it and believe it's completely normal for the average male to be attracted to cute twinks as the Romans did and often even reject the very notion of “sexual orientations” to begin with. Their “support” is definitely not in the sense of what one would expect of the U.S.A. “culture war”, jokes such as the below illustrate well what the culture is: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/55/fe/d1/55fed16b625f9c5869587908fbce6549.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/55/fe/d1/55fed16b625f9c5869587908f...
  - greazy 1y ago
    I should have used a better example to support my point. I was referring to the website it self allowing gay and trans content, and even other non mainstream content (furry, MLP). The content is not just porn related (though a big chunk of it is). On the porn front, I don't agree with liking 'lady dick' twink lovers only. There's 'normal' gay content (male on male). On the non porn content, lots of posts will begin with 'Im a gayfag' (fag here I used as a catch all self deprecating term, some users will say I'm a oldfag, even seen ladyfag). Never seen any outright harassment of gay people when they post. Having said that, there is straight gay, trans, minority hating posts and content. 4chan is a wild jungle. Or was.
omnivore 1y ago
Meh, good riddance. The old internet wasn't all good.
pfdietz 1y ago
It was always possible to ID 4chan posters via court orders, wasn't it? I mean, Sheriff Mike Chitwood had 3 (or was it 4) people who posted death threats against him there arrested
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  Of course. I remember reading transcripts of Cristopher Poole cooperating in court during a trial. He used to straight up tell users he would fully cooperate with authorities if required. Nobody there is in the business of going to jail. You're anonymous to other users. Unless you're behind seven proxies, connecting your posts to your real identity is as simple as correlating 4chan logs with ISP logs. Usually that requires court orders so it tends to happen in response to real offenses. Insulting each other with slurs isn't enough for a court order so it's fine. Chances are the NSA knows all your posts regardless.
danso 1y ago
Any articles about the technical details of the hack?
bitbasher 1y ago
Meh, I don't feel bad. The worst interview I ever had in tech was with Christopher Poole when he was founding canv.as, it's hard to feel bad for him.
- johnnyjeans 1y ago
  What was bad about the interview? Can you share any details?
  - bitbasher 1y ago
    The arrogance and better than thou attitude. He was like the male version of Ellen Degeneres.
- pizzadog 1y ago
  Can you expand on this? I remember canv.as, it was a weird but interesting project but it seemed doomed from the outset.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  He sold the site years ago so this is not affecting him in the slightest.
cherryteastain 1y ago
Rip 4chan. For all the bad it did, 4chan also made at least one real contribution to science [1], specifically to the study of superpermutations (aka the Haruhi problem), which was cited by genuine academics. We should try to remember it by that. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anime-haruhi-math-mystery https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anim...
- lwidvrizokdhai 1y ago
  Oh wow, that's genuinely cool.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  I think this is more of a temporary concussion, it'll be back up by the weekend.
- spacemule 1y ago
  I'm not understanding the issue. The article isn't so clear to me. Would you mind clarifying what problem they solved? Per my understanding, there is a show with 14 episodes that the viewer wants to watch in every order possible. How is this not just 14 factorial? I know this can't be the problem, but it's just not clear to me from the article. Edit: I found this link that explains it to anyone else as confused as I was: https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bvn1rz/eli5_the_haruhi_problem/ky1p95g/ https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bvn1rz/...
  - cherryteastain 1y ago
    Given a set of characters, find the shortest string with all permutations of that set. With 2 characters a,b the answer would be "aba", length 3 (not 2! like you suggested).
robtherobber 1y ago
Interesting to see HN user astrange as the admin.
lesbolasinc 1y ago
besides the fact 4chan is a cesspool I think there's a certain sadness that comes with the possible death of another "early-internet" forum. I feel like 4chan was the last living source of what the young internet was like - raw, unfiltered, and honest. You've got to admit in today's day and age that's genuinely something rare especially in current time of grift culture. so much history potentially gone, just like BB.com's forums...
fooList 1y ago
China could say less restricted American internet is racist, because we tolerate content they do not. Like 4chan tolerates what Reddit does not. Would it be a fallacy to say people who chose to escape Chinese censorship online are racists? Maybe it’s a matter of degree or something?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
lwidvrizokdhai 1y ago
It was bound to come tumbling down eventually. I've had good times in some of the discussion boards and especially with some of the more chill and creative boards like /qst/. the influence of /pol/ overshadows pretty much every board though, and it's rare to see a thread go by without some racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic bile being spilled unfortunately.
- soygem 1y ago
  [dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tannhaeuser 1y ago
Why are we speaking in the past tense here? Is it established that 4chan is going down?
- geor9e 1y ago
  It is down. It was up in the past. Past tense seems to make the most grammatical sense. But I get why it adds ambiguity about it's future.
helle253 1y ago
Wow, the comments on this thread are much more divisive than I thought. I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. Unfortunately moreso now that /pol/ and /r9k/ have taken over broad swathes of the internet. It's sad to see how far this old haunt has fallen. Lurking /v/ in my early/mid teens was a formative experience for me. It wasn't as hateful as it was, until Gamergate.
- h2zizzle 1y ago
  /r9k/ is such a weird situation, because its original incarnation prided itself on being an intellectual bastion on the site. The robot meant that you couldn't meme so easily; you had to attempt to write something substantial or meaningful (or at least original). Most were simply discussions, but you'd also get creative gems like futureguy's sobering predictions (well, history, for him). tfwnogf really did kill everything.
- throwanem 1y ago
  > I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. "Somewhat accurate" is exactly right. This formulation overstates the number of Internet cultures by one, in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    > in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. This isn’t true at all.
    - throwanem 1y ago
      > This isn’t true at all. Many will say the same. Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source. That still has to be explained, and I would be curious how you do so, although you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim.
skifreevictim 1y ago
For all of its many flaws and the boatload of trouble that has come of it, I still ultimately believe that 4chan is unfairly maligned. I can't deny that the majority of the website's culture has been tainted by idpol bickering ever since /pol/ was added to it, but I'm always going to appreciate 4chan for being a place where I can write ostensibly anonymous posts and talk with other likeminded people about anything and everything. When you have a funny, good faith conversation with someone else on a website that gives you no incentive whatsoever to have one, it feels good. Soyjak.st is unfortunately nothing like that. It is a website about itself, and itself is a parody of post-2014 rightwing 4chan meme slop culture. It is earnestly what most people believe the entirety of 4chan to be.
aaron695 1y ago
[dead]
on_the_train 1y ago
What a sad day. It's the best page on the net by a wide margin. Hope they'll recover
- creatonez 1y ago
  It better not recover. 4chan should be burned to the ground. And so should Soyjak.Party. It's a blight on humanity.
duxup 1y ago
I'll ask I guess. People still use 4chan? I recall 4chan at one short point in time being a semi amusing meme posting spot on the web but as always as soon as it was popular it turned into a lot of "edgelord" spam and drama.
- Loughla 1y ago
  There was a time that if you weren't on 4chan, you missed everything good. I remember staying awake for 20 hours tracking one thread. If you left it was gone forever and you genuinely missed out. 2004-5 area. That being said, I haven't been back since 2014? It was always pretty heavily influenced by b and pol, but it got really bad the two years before Trump 1. Alt right bullshit took over completely. It astounds me that people think 4 Chan is a place for deviants, but Twitter is fine. Twitter is 10,000x worse.
- lastcobbo 1y ago
  And longcat, don’t forget him
  - duxup 1y ago
    Good point.
- s3krit 1y ago
  I’ve used it probably daily since about 2006. Which is kind of sad actually.
throwaway743 1y ago
/pol is trash. /b used to be good till early-mid 2010s when it became 95% hentai/porn instead of 30%, after sabu squealed and the fbi took over.
truepolak 1y ago
[dead]
partiallypro 1y ago
Honestly surprised this isn't getting more coverage, not just in the media but here.
robotnikman 1y ago
I did some digging and the hacker posted which exploit he used. Apparently some boards allowed uploading PDF files, but the site never checked if the PDF file was an actual PDF file. Once a PDF file was uploaded it was passed to a version of Ghostscript from 2012 which would generate a thumbnail. So the attacker found an exploit where uploading a PDF with the right PostScript commands could give the attacker shell access.
- lastcobbo 1y ago
  Bobby Tables can’t keep getting away with this
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    Bobby Ignore All Previous Instructions however…
    - dcl 1y ago
      thank you for this laugh
- ranger_danger 1y ago
  Why would you say how you did it? Now they can't do it all over again when it comes back /s
- 0x303 1y ago
  Got a source? Not doubting, just curious.
  - robotnikman 1y ago
    search through the thread on the site where that attack came from. ctrl+f postscript and you will find the post
  - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
    Here: https://i.ibb.co/9mWLp4m9/4chanhack.jpg https://i.ibb.co/9mWLp4m9/4chanhack.jpg
jaco6 1y ago
[dead]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
casey2 1y ago
QA won? what the butt
mikrl 1y ago
For all the sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: “website running 15 year old software gets pwned again”
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
It truly is an end of an era. I popped in every so often to check the temperature and was rarely disappointed by the level of crazy pervading it. Amusingly, despite it having such a massive influence on internet as a whole including its lingo and memes, my wife did not even knew about it existed until today. I do not think it will be missed by many, but that kind of hole does not exactly disappear without a trace.
- Loughla 1y ago
  After leaving when it got too shitty, I would go back once a year or so to check the racism in pol, see if maybe b was back to doing things instead of just porn, and read the plainly undiagnosed schizophrenia on the paranormal board. Like you said, not a lot of people in my life have any idea what it is, but it does hold a special place in my heart. It started when I was trying to establish my own personality, and it provided me with a safe avenue to try out different "me's".
perdomon 1y ago
Has Fireship made a video about this yet? I bet we'll see one tomorrow.
- perdomon 1y ago
  I totally called it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNratwOrSiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNratwOrSiY
doctorshady 1y ago
It looks like it's back up - sort of. Loading very slowly, anyway. After a compromise like this, I'm a little surprised.
ggm 1y ago
Is there anyone doing something akin to the data analytics which happened for the Panama Papers? I appreciate this has overtones of doxxing. I am not asking for "the list" but more if there is an intent to tie up some loose ends about influence relating mainly to /pol/
Uptrenda 1y ago
Watching hacker news try use cold analytical intellect to deconstruct 4chan's jokes and culture (and still missing the point) has got to be the funniest joke ever. Perhaps a little more analysis will yield the answer to understanding the complexity of a green frog or running bear. Though I wouldn't count on it. It has to mean something nefarious. Much like the soft 'schlop schlop schlop' of a dog's tongue lapping up water -- its meaning to us is a mystery.
- Loughla 1y ago
  From what I can tell, there's not much analysis of 4chan going on here, but more people just sort of remembering their time on the site. That's what this has been for me; a walk down memory Lane to my teenage edgelord years.
EcommerceFlow 1y ago
/lit/ is a goldmine, I’ve discovered so many amazing books there. Everywhere else on the web is algorithm or voting skewed so no real opinions can be shared
- a_bonobo 1y ago
  I agree, I'd even go so far and say it's one of the best places on the internet to discuss 'serious' books (within all the rampant troll posts). Book discussions on reddit are far too positive when it comes to terrible books, /lit/ will call a bad book a bad book. Plus there was always an undercurrent in interest in 'obscure' books - there are great reading charts out there for all kinds of literatures and languages made by /lit/ users.
- weberer 1y ago
  They even wrote their own book collaboratively https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28282177-hypersphere https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28282177-hypersphere
- coolKid721 1y ago
  https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2025/01/how-4chan-became-the-home-of-the-elite-reader https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2025/01/how-4chan-becam...
- squigz 1y ago
  Do you really truly believe 4chan is the only place opinions can be shared on the Internet?
HaZeust 1y ago
There are, of course, many people with memories of 4chan that precede that of mine (oldf*) - I could only even articulate what I was seeing on 4chan at the age I was around 2014. But by 2015 - with only 1-2 years of experience on the site - I noticed a drastic downturn of the authenticity in posts and comments that I was used to. Then, I saw quality of topics and speaking points go down in 2020. And finally, I saw the social fabric of 4chan itself go down essentially right after Omegle was shut down. By mid-2024, I couldn't even trust it for contrarian or less-conventional (or, frankly, brutally honest) viewpoints of topics they purported to care about. And honestly, as things got better in my life and I went out to be more recreational, I went from going on 4chan once a day - to once a week - to once a month - and finally, to only when I wanted to see edgy takes on divisive current events. I'll miss all that, despite all it lost over the years. And I'll miss the element of design and mannerisms in its userbase. It required an upfront investment to even understand how to engage with, and a "lurk moar" attitude. RIP. Edit: It was also very crazy watching small groups of people turn insider-jargon into mainstream terminology. I'll also never forget watching the thread of QAnon's conception in real-time. Crazy stuff originated there - both in substance and meaning.
- Loughla 1y ago
  I was on there almost from the beginning. Early 2004. It was never good, but it definitely went entirely to shit when all the alt-right nut bags started flooding the site with nonsense starting around 2014-15. I have to believe it was a coordinated effort, it just seemed too immediate across the entire site.
lngnmn2 1y ago
[dead]
zeofig 1y ago
I hope it comes back. Although I don't agree with a lot of what's on there, it's one of the only places you can find hot, fresh, (mostly) uncensored, and unalgorithmed content.
127 1y ago
I left 4chin by the time it became impossible to dodge pedophiles, room temperature IQ and absolute lowest tier trash. It used to be fun to hunt for quality content, but it seems nobody of value visits that site anymore.
plumbus 1y ago
This is some vBulletin software jankness
praptak 1y ago
4chan was never known for high security, early versions were pretty close to pasting raw user input into HTML, which was eagerly used by griefers, for example by pasting right-to-left unicode overrides in their comments which was enough to spill to the whole page.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 1y ago
4chan sized site that gets attention from all sorts of unique people...ran ancient php? Ouch
- gaiagraphia 1y ago
  Makes you wonder what all these 'advanced frameworks' have actually offered the internet.. (hard mode: don't mention advertising)
  - slackfan 1y ago
    Trick question, they haven't. (Perl was the pinnacle of webdev and I anybody telling you otherwise is lying, or a javascript programmer.)
  - gradientsrneat 1y ago
    Automatic crash reporting with time travel debugging with capability for graphical snapshots of the frontend. Bandwidth reductions involving incremental loading of images, or not having to reload the whole site after a click. Most sites are better off with static pages + server-side rendering + vanilla js though.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
lenerdenator 1y ago
Running a site like 4chan on outdated software is not just a choice, but one of the choices of all time. Really, it was gonna happen one of these days.
RKFADU_UOFCCLEL 1y ago
Incidentally, KYM website is an original dinosaur like PHP, both loaded full of invalid / cargo cult practices, such as blocking proxy users from reading their (mostly read-only) website. Guessing it's bloated garbage made by some kid and this is part of the reason.
smeeger 1y ago
4chan has been completely dead for almost ten years and i dont understand why anyone talks about it still.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ReitardXd 1y ago
ShartyGods stay winning

This makes me wonder whether there's anything in there that can point to the identity of the original QAnon. That would be a pretty interesting outcome.

swarnie 1y ago
Aren't we 99% sure that was a Ron Watkins grift now?
- wickedsight 1y ago
  That's why I wrote 'the original'. It's very possible Watkins took control after Q moved from 4Chan to 8Chan from what I've read. I'm far from fully up-to-date on this saga though.
  - AnnaRiot 1y ago
    I am pretty sure Q was originally started by the guys behind Cicada3301 before Ron took over
    - Wobbles42 1y ago
      This is a genuinely interesting assertion. Is there any evidence of this?
ribosometronome 1y ago
Given the nature of the hackers and their immediate actions, it seems unlikely they would reveal that sort of information.
Borgz 1y ago
4chan doesn't store threads for very long, hence the plethora of third-party archive sites. I doubt they are still storing any useful data from back then.

CamelCaseName 1y ago

If you lamented the disappearance of the "old internet", well, this was a part of it, and now it may be gone too. The title is also a fair bit understated. They're leaking the moderators home addresses and work contact info (for admins, who are(were?) paid moderators)

robobro 1y ago
The initial leaker is most likely not the same parties as the ones tying email addresses and usernames to people's "real identities", if you look at the thread where the leak was announced. Say what you will about 4chan but I am concerned for the team managing it - them and their close ones are certainly going to be exposed to a whole lot of viciousness soon :(
- pjc50 1y ago
  > them and their close ones are certainly going to be exposed to a whole lot of viciousness soon Isn't viciousness the notorious bread and butter of 4chan?
  - morkalork 1y ago
    Live by the sword, die by the sword I would say. You don't get to enjoy raising leopards and also get to be surprised when you become lunch one day
    - brookst 1y ago
      They certainly don’t get to claim any kind of moral high ground, but as a bystander I can feel empathy for someone hit by a drunk driver, even if the victim had driven drunk before in the past. Any increase in human suffering is unfortunate, regardless of one’s take on just desserts or karma or whatever.
      - soVeryTired 1y ago
        I’d say it’s more like a high-profile NRA member getting shot. Unfortunate but it’s hard to miss the irony.

deadbabe 1y ago

[flagged]

cbg0 1y ago

Hosting a copy of phpMyAdmin behind basic HTTP authentication in 2025 really is asking for it.

jsheard 1y ago
I was kinda surprised to see that phpMyAdmin is still maintained, albeit only barely. The last release was in January but before that it hadn't been touched for over two years.
- pelagicAustral 1y ago
  This stuff is still packaged with cPanel, which is probably the most common way to manage web servers on the internet.
  - Macha 1y ago
    I wonder how long it's been since that was true. I think that era passed when most small businesses and individuals moved from self hosting to SaaS.
    - technion 1y ago
      Nearly every website developer servicing small business builds a WordPress site and sets it up on a hosting company's cPanel install with phpmyadmin running by default.
      - jsheard 1y ago
        I guess those installs are the ones the Wordpress vuln scanners are looking for when they spam my server with /wp-admin/ requests.
      - Macha 1y ago
        Which are far far outnumbered by people setting up squarespace sites, or shopify sites or facebook pages or twitter profiles these days. It was definitely true at one point that small scale indie web devs and small business contractors outnumbered big tech in both headcount and servers. I don't think that's been true for a while now.

trallnag 1y ago

Jannies had it coming tbh. They were certainly tightening the rope when it came to free speech in the last few years

pjc50 1y ago
Always curious to know what kind of speech this kind of complaint refers to.
- krige 1y ago
  Free. In practice whatever a given janny doesn't like gets the boot. The moderation can get REALLY schizophrenic depending on time zone, and there are persistent rumors that certain boards are controlled by groups of interest (notably the cesspool known as /pol/ is very astroturfed).
  - giraffe_lady 1y ago
    Free isn't a kind of speech, it describes a condition under which speech is performed. Their question was what kind of speech is being alluded to.
    - krige 1y ago
      Their question was a gotcha attempt, and a misguided one at that, hence the answer specifically not playing along.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - giraffe_lady 1y ago
        Once you've made this many comments about it and are still unwilling to describe the acts you're defending I would certainly call that playing.

geriatric-janny 1y ago

My official association with 4chan ended in 2010, but I still recognise a good third of those names and would wager the leak is legit.

delusional 1y ago
What kind of official association could one have with 4chan? 4chan was formative for my early connection to the internet, and I'm really curious what the organization behind it looked like. Was it professionally driven, or just some random guy mailing checks? stuff like that.
- no_time 1y ago
  Well... A full dump of the board exclusive to moderators and janitors was leaked too so now you could take a look yourself.
- geriatric-janny 1y ago
  I lied about my age and was given janitor access in the mid 2000s. There was a special /j/ board to coordinate on, but it broke relatively early, and you mostly had to hang out in the #janiteam channel on Rizon. I think almost everybody else was underage as well. There was a minimal web overlay that let you delete/escalate posts. You couldn't see people's IPs, but you could see how many outstanding ban requests they had. These numbers helped me deduce that many boards' most infamous personalities were all the same guy. We were all offered the chance to become mods in 2010, but moot wanted to see our faces on a Skype call. I thought that was a step too far and just gradually stopped caring after that. Seems like I made the right choice. On the whole it was barely held together technically and organisationally, mostly run by moot's personal friends, and fun all around. Things were far less serious then. And the checks arrived on time every month: $0.00
  - delusional 1y ago
    Sounds about like what I would have expected as a (also underage) user at the time. The suspicion was always that most of the memorable joke chains were probably just one guy self-replying (I always suspected that was the case for the hunter2 meme specifically). It didn't really matter, it was funny anyway. Thanks for taking the time to reply, and thanks for the fun back then :)

SirFatty 1y ago

Surprised that the admins have any personal details associated with their 4chan profile.

OuterVale 1y ago

Posted link is a tad vulgar and scarce on information. A bit of a collection forming on The Sun's live blog post: Thousands of 4Chan users report issues accessing controversial website - https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/34472708/4chan-down-updates-controversial-website-hacking/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/34472708/4chan-down-updates-co...

dang 1y ago
(Posted link was originally https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked_hacker_reopens_qa_and_leaks_all/ https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked.... We since changed it.)
anigbrowl 1y ago
Why would you use the Sun as a source for anything

TheAceOfHearts 1y ago

There's a KnowYourMeme [0] post with additional details and context. Most interesting to me is finding out that there' s a word filer / transformer, so SMH becomes BAKA and TBH becomes DESU, as two examples. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/april-2025-4chan-hack https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/april-2025-4chan-hack

tanjtanjtanj 1y ago
Yep, it’s been that way for 20+ years! The term “weeaboo” as a term for western anime fans only came about because it was what the word “wapanese” filtered to. It was originally a nonsense work made up in a Perry Bible Fellowship comic.
dang 1y ago
That does seem to have more information, so I've changed the top url to that from https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked_hacker_reopens_qa_and_leaks_all/ https://old.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1jzkjlg/4chan_hacked.... Thanks!
FMecha 1y ago
From what I heard, it was because they were tired of people posting "tbh fam". This does result in people instead posting "tbdesu" in being aware of the filter. A note that the filter for "doublechan" was never updated to include its current name, nor the place where this current attack originated was ever filtered, afaik.

swarnie 1y ago

One of the best websites on the internet. Hopefully not gone forever.

soygem 1y ago

[dead]

rootsudo 1y ago

Wow doxing the Jannies! I mean, wow, they’re doxing people that helped keep a legacy internet place alive and compliant with the law. Who would do that?

masfuerte 1y ago
The man.
joseda-hg 1y ago
Sound right up the alley for a 4chan user
OhioMan2943 1y ago
Whoever's trying their hardest to shut down the rest of the free internet as well. I do think these actions we've seen in the last 5 years are co-ordinated. Will post sources soon
- Loughla 1y ago
  Please post sources. And what other sites are you talking about?
- Alifatisk 1y ago
  > Will post sources soon When?

jmyeet 1y ago

4chan will be studied for years for its role in alt-right radicalization as well as being a baroemeter for young male discontent. For example, QAnon started on 4chan (I believe as a joke?) [1]. Nowadays a lot of 4chan users and traffic have since migrated to Twitter for pretty obvious reasons. Pseudo-intellectual racism has a lot of roots in 4chan (eg the popularity of Julius Evola [2]) that's deeply tied to "trad" content, Andrew Tate fandom, the manosphere and "self-improvement" [3]. Things like the Bored Ape Yacht Club originated on 4chan and it's full of racist memes [4]. A lot of racist and antisemitic memes originated on 4chan. Worst of all, it seems like Elon Musk is motivated by a deep desire to be liked by 4chan [5]. So the point is that 4chan users (and admins) have a lot of real-world influence and that's kinda scary. It also makes them a target for this kind of hack. I suspect a lot of people will be exposed by this and in more than a few cases, you'll find ties to the current administration. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-... [2]: https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-bronze-age-pervert https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-b... [3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00732-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00732-x [4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpH3O6mnZvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpH3O6mnZvw [5]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/6/how-musk-ushered-4chan-into-us-politics https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/6/how-musk-ushered...

VectorLock 1y ago
I would be 0% surprised to see Stephen Miller's information in this leak.
- howmayiannoyyou 1y ago
  If you're looking for malign influence on 4chan - look outside the US. Anyone on /pol/ and /k/ after Oct 7th understands clearly who has been influencing if not controlling the site.
  - reverius42 1y ago
    I think it's the other way around; keen observers have noticed a 4chan influence on the US Government's policies.

WindowsDev 1y ago

Is the source code which leaked everything one would need to host their own copy of the site?

technion 1y ago
There are tonnes of open source clones on github, source code to run the site is nothing special. You still need users.
- joseda-hg 1y ago
  Might I add, 4chan's implementation isn't even particularly good one
  - johnnyjeans 1y ago
    Nah I disagree. It's the best one. All of the extra shit other boards have just feels like needless bloat. Honestly the JS extension they added like 10 years ago is a bit much.
kaiokendev 1y ago
The site has an API for reading posts [0]. It works (worked?) quite well. For making posts, you'd need to write your own functionality that forwards the CAPTCHA and post timers. [0]: https://github.com/4chan/4chan-API https://github.com/4chan/4chan-API
PaulRobinson 1y ago
No, you'll need servers and enough network capacity to handle the load, an understanding and supportive hosting provider, a law degree or enough money to pay somebody with one to keep you out of court/jail/prison, a network of degenerates to provide traffic and content and/or a copy of the existing 4chan content, a stomach of steel to deal with the content moderation duties, and a moral compass so warped you think hosting degrading and illegal content is "just liberalism and freedom of speech" and not something that needs a second thought by any right-minded person. But sure, if you have all that and the source code, you're all set. Godspeed!

no_time 1y ago

Not the first time this has happened, and probably not the last. I hope they bounce back from this like they did before. It's a special place.

scryers_bloom 1y ago

We've heard it time and time again that 4chan is the so called "last bastion of free speech on the internet" when this so called free speech is just being unapologetically racist and antisemitic. I hope its gone for good.

blacktits69 1y ago
you think these are akin to endangered species? these are humans collectivizing and cloaking under maladaptive pretenses. you're advocating for empowering polio because it is life and deserves a chance.
DaSHacka 1y ago
Halfchan's likely been around longer than you have and will just as likely remain around long after you're gone
- scryers_bloom 1y ago
  That's fine, I don't really expect a 22 year old site with generational backup storage to actually go down forever. I'm 23, so I got them beat!
y-curious 1y ago
I, too, prefer to see my vulgar memes served by an AI algorithm alongside ads. Sooooo much better! /s
kittikitti 1y ago
Yes, and everywhere else people have to worry about being deported for pointing out Israel's war crimes. At least no one needed to worry about that on 4Chan, but seeing an anonymous racist meme is even worse for people like you.
- scryers_bloom 1y ago
  That is a completely separate problem, and it's dishonest making the comparison. Extremist right wing ideology and genocide is actively advocated on /pol/ as well as anti-Jewish rhetoric. Neo-nazism is not pointing out Israel's war crimes, and pointing out Israel's war crimes is not neo-nazism or anti-Jewish. /pol/ isn't antisemitic for Israel's genocide; they just hate Jewish people. The Trump administration trying to deport people for doing so is also unjustified. People are freely criticizing Israel on other popular social media (notably TikTok and Instagram) without inciting a modern neo-nazi and right wing movement like what has happened on 4chan in the past 10 years.

yapyap 1y ago

Hacker named 4chan hacks 4chan

Red_Tarsius 1y ago

I feel too many people conflate /pol/ with the whole website. I enjoyed browsing through sfw boards like /tg/ (tabletop media), /ck/ (cooking) and /fit/ (fitness). I had long discussions about the SW sequels on /tv/ back in 2015-19. The readership was surprisingly diverse and the anonymity lead users to provide more focused replies. With bodybuilding.com gone, the blue boards felt like the last bastion of the old internet.

MattDemers 1y ago
I think people also don't acknowledge how much terminology, slang and other culture originate and spread there. When it breaches into Twitter (usually through funposters) people kind of ignore the unsavoury origin and rewrite the history. The anonymous nature kind of provides that petri dish of "if it's strong culture, it'll survive or be modified."
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Don't forget the slurs. They have some unique slurs in there that have backstories too.
- thih9 1y ago
  > how much terminology, slang and other culture originate and spread there Could you give some examples? The more unexpected, the better. Preferably with sources, because tracing word origin is difficult enough on its own.
  - boyesm 1y ago
    Moot lists some examples in this video: https://youtu.be/a_1UEAGCo30?si=JMVO5ox3K2AhxrMY&t=97 https://youtu.be/a_1UEAGCo30?si=JMVO5ox3K2AhxrMY&t=97
  - dmonitor 1y ago
    Wiktionary has a surprisingly robust list https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_4chan_slang https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_4chan_slang

bedane 1y ago

[flagged]

brigandish 1y ago

I see a lot of hate for 4chan here. Why? I’ve never used it, know it by reputation, but not sure why there’s so much hate for it.

wegfawefgawefg 1y ago
[flagged]
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  Certainly has nothing to do with the toxic userbase of at least some of the boards
  - wegfawefgawefg 1y ago
    I bet you 90% of the haters have never even been to the website.
    - GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
      i don't know why you'd bet that
      - wegfawefgawefg 1y ago
        because my religious redneck family thinks 4chan is a bunch of hackers who hate the elderly because fox news mentioned "ok boomer" meme once. because ive met many people in real life who think its evil but have never been on it or have even seen it. every normie hates 4chan, but none of them have never been there.
Philpax 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Controversies_and_harassment_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Controversies_and_harass...

gherkinnn 1y ago

You know, I always found Twitter (even pre-X) to be worse than 4chan ever was. Not in obvious terms, but in how it fucked with your head.

1970-01-01 1y ago
This is a pretty good take! It's because you could verbally attack and fight the 4chan idiots with a swarm of common sense and be lauded for doing that job. Doing the same on X will just get you banned for whatever reason Elon feels is best 'for the community'.
- lesbolasinc 1y ago
  I dont understand why twitter is so prevalent in the tech community; and it's not like you can just 'not use it' - you are at a true disadvantage if you aren't on twitter because of how much discourse around new tech, private equity, etc transpires on it. I'm surprised a literal echo-chamber in which free speech is suppressed for disagreeing with the party line is responsible for so much productivity because of how many techbros are active on it. What happened to the time where being a techbro meant you were an open source libertarian like Stallman?
  - mlsu 1y ago
    I think that’s just an artifact of twitter’s history. It was “normal” (increasingly algorithm slop driven) website until roughly 1-2 years ago when it was bought out and became maga slop. Remember twitter came out in like 2007 when only tech people were on the internet.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - username332211 1y ago
    The feedback mechanism on Twitter allows you to find useful discussions of current affairs in less popular topics. Can you find a good discussion of current events in agribusiness on Reddit? No. On Facebook? No. But if you open up Twitter and search for Arthur Daniels and you'll find something useful. So, when the manager at a company wants to publicize, he has nowhere else to go. > I'm surprised a literal echo-chamber in which free speech is suppressed for disagreeing with the party line is responsible for so much productivity because of how many techbros are active on it. Reddit is worse. Facebook is worse. Bluesky is a community that couldn't stand Twitter changing it's party line, so it's worse. Mastodon is complex and suffers from the same problems as Bluesky. Like it or not, Musk did choose his acquisition well.

underseacables 1y ago

I have been to 4chan maybe 4 times in my life. The first was like ok.. Then I visited /b and LOL'd for a couple of hours. Then it just got redundant and depressing. It really is the arsehole of the internet, but some people seem to find it useful.

Blikkentrekker 1y ago
> but some people seem to find it useful. Honestly, it filled a very specific hole for me that I found nowhere else. Everyone is talking about the “unfiltered content” and all those things but to me it was mostly just topical. It was really one of the few places where one could get a good discussion on the internet about Japanese female-oriented entertainment which I'm well aware isn't the first thing people think about with 4chan but pretty much every other forum about Japanese entertainment is completely dominated by male-oriented entertainment, except when they go out of their way to specifically make a board catered to female-oriented entertainment, but that has the side effect that people on those boards end up talking more about gender politics than about the entertainment itself and I just want to talk about my favorite television shows and comic books and really don't care about all the politics. 4chan by it's nature doesn't drown out minority tastes and voices. This really isn't just a “female-oriented entertainment” thing but really any minority taste that just gets drowned out on most boards to the point that it disappears. The only other place I know where one can do this is Tumblr, more or less, but it's a very different experience, not necessarily better or worse but there just isn't this kind of “live discussion” atmosphere and vibe going on on Tumblr about episodes that are currently airing where people post small comments as the episode is airing and they're watching it. It's more for long impressions after it was aired and it doesn't have the same degree of interaction, it's a blogging place, not a message board. As said, it isn't just that but “obscure taste” in general. You can make a thread on 4chan about some really obscure piece of fiction that no one knows and get a discussion going, half with the people that do it know, in part because it's an imageboard so they're drawn in to an image they recognize and it stands out, and half with people that never heard of it before, see the images in the thread, see it looks interesting and try it out. The images are the key I feel, it lowers the barrier of entry for people to try out something obscure because they see the images which lures them in. It was one of the best places to get a discussion going about some obscure piece of fiction which Tumblr doesn't do either, the only things that are being discussed are the really big titles. There are so many relatively obscure titles I enjoy I will possibly never get to discuss with anyone in my life again if 4chan not come back. I know many of those titles from 4chan because people constantly promote and share fairly obscure things there and the images again sell it.

shipscode 1y ago

The take on 4chan on here is super intriguing. I always felt that the current social media/doomscroll/memesharing landscape which has become so common worldwide is indiscernable and in some ways worse than 4chan. It feels like 4chan left it's homepage and went worldwide sometime in the early 2010s when iPhone-style phone use became more commonplace. I remember that 4chan users had more honor than users on the internet today. One example would be 4Chan's "Not your personal army" mentality vs. the widespread doxxing/"call their place of employment!" witch hunts, driven by huge accounts on IG/Tiktok/etc, that hit normal people daily. The modern social media landscape has become far more hectic, harmful, and downright scary than 4chan. Dodging explicit imagery is harder on Instagram's explore page than on 4chan, and the widespread popularization of OF creators has zero bounds across the socials. DOXXING is no longer frowned upon and now commonplace. And memes have become less unique and funny and more commoditized.

gtirloni 1y ago
Isn't that the path that most platforms follow once they get mildly popular?
amadeuspagel 1y ago
"Not your personal army" goes father then not doxxing. It's a rejection of any attempt to imagine a community of strangers, united by hatred of a scapegoat.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  If someone rallied a hate-mob on 4chan, though, how would people know? Since 4chan overtly resists it, it'd rapidly move off of there, but it's still a great place to find like-minded folks that'd follow someone to another server to go brigade someone.
  - Klonoar 1y ago
    4chan has always claimed to resist it, but 4chan was never immune to being shuffled a specific way.

cobson 1y ago

gem

sensanaty 1y ago
no coal to be found here
soygem 1y ago
[dead]

greazy 1y ago

4chan is a reflection of the depraved, extreme side of humanity. Twitter has taken on the mantle of 'asshole of the internet', but I think the rotten apples post in both. 4chan is oddly accepting of gay and trans people. I've seen gay and trans porn side by side with bbc and bwc porn posts. Strange to see racist trans porn lovers. I like 4chan for the minor boards, not /pol/ or /b/. But /boardgames/ and /dyi/ and /international/. The absurd humor, green texts that make absolutely no sense, or ones that lead down a strange and wonderful path. I like being anonymous on the internet.

Blikkentrekker 1y ago
> 4chan is oddly accepting of gay and trans people. I've seen gay and trans porn side by side with bbc and bwc porn posts. Strange to see racist trans porn lovers. It only seems odd because many people interpret this through a U.S.A. “culture war” lens and “gay people”. You believe they're “accepting of gay people” in the sense of that culture war because of the “gay porn”. In reality, they take more of a classical Graeco-Roman approach to it and believe it's completely normal for the average male to be attracted to cute twinks as the Romans did and often even reject the very notion of “sexual orientations” to begin with. Their “support” is definitely not in the sense of what one would expect of the U.S.A. “culture war”, jokes such as the below illustrate well what the culture is: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/55/fe/d1/55fed16b625f9c5869587908fbce6549.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/55/fe/d1/55fed16b625f9c5869587908f...
- greazy 1y ago
  I should have used a better example to support my point. I was referring to the website it self allowing gay and trans content, and even other non mainstream content (furry, MLP). The content is not just porn related (though a big chunk of it is). On the porn front, I don't agree with liking 'lady dick' twink lovers only. There's 'normal' gay content (male on male). On the non porn content, lots of posts will begin with 'Im a gayfag' (fag here I used as a catch all self deprecating term, some users will say I'm a oldfag, even seen ladyfag). Never seen any outright harassment of gay people when they post. Having said that, there is straight gay, trans, minority hating posts and content. 4chan is a wild jungle. Or was.

omnivore 1y ago

Meh, good riddance. The old internet wasn't all good.

pfdietz 1y ago

It was always possible to ID 4chan posters via court orders, wasn't it? I mean, Sheriff Mike Chitwood had 3 (or was it 4) people who posted death threats against him there arrested

matheusmoreira 1y ago
Of course. I remember reading transcripts of Cristopher Poole cooperating in court during a trial. He used to straight up tell users he would fully cooperate with authorities if required. Nobody there is in the business of going to jail. You're anonymous to other users. Unless you're behind seven proxies, connecting your posts to your real identity is as simple as correlating 4chan logs with ISP logs. Usually that requires court orders so it tends to happen in response to real offenses. Insulting each other with slurs isn't enough for a court order so it's fine. Chances are the NSA knows all your posts regardless.

danso 1y ago

Any articles about the technical details of the hack?

bitbasher 1y ago

Meh, I don't feel bad. The worst interview I ever had in tech was with Christopher Poole when he was founding canv.as, it's hard to feel bad for him.

johnnyjeans 1y ago
What was bad about the interview? Can you share any details?
- bitbasher 1y ago
  The arrogance and better than thou attitude. He was like the male version of Ellen Degeneres.
pizzadog 1y ago
Can you expand on this? I remember canv.as, it was a weird but interesting project but it seemed doomed from the outset.
anigbrowl 1y ago
He sold the site years ago so this is not affecting him in the slightest.

cherryteastain 1y ago

Rip 4chan. For all the bad it did, 4chan also made at least one real contribution to science [1], specifically to the study of superpermutations (aka the Haruhi problem), which was cited by genuine academics. We should try to remember it by that. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anime-haruhi-math-mystery https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18019464/4chan-anon-anim...

lwidvrizokdhai 1y ago
Oh wow, that's genuinely cool.
anigbrowl 1y ago
I think this is more of a temporary concussion, it'll be back up by the weekend.
spacemule 1y ago
I'm not understanding the issue. The article isn't so clear to me. Would you mind clarifying what problem they solved? Per my understanding, there is a show with 14 episodes that the viewer wants to watch in every order possible. How is this not just 14 factorial? I know this can't be the problem, but it's just not clear to me from the article. Edit: I found this link that explains it to anyone else as confused as I was: https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bvn1rz/eli5_the_haruhi_problem/ky1p95g/ https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bvn1rz/...
- cherryteastain 1y ago
  Given a set of characters, find the shortest string with all permutations of that set. With 2 characters a,b the answer would be "aba", length 3 (not 2! like you suggested).

robtherobber 1y ago

Interesting to see HN user astrange as the admin.

lesbolasinc 1y ago

besides the fact 4chan is a cesspool I think there's a certain sadness that comes with the possible death of another "early-internet" forum. I feel like 4chan was the last living source of what the young internet was like - raw, unfiltered, and honest. You've got to admit in today's day and age that's genuinely something rare especially in current time of grift culture. so much history potentially gone, just like BB.com's forums...

fooList 1y ago

China could say less restricted American internet is racist, because we tolerate content they do not. Like 4chan tolerates what Reddit does not. Would it be a fallacy to say people who chose to escape Chinese censorship online are racists? Maybe it’s a matter of degree or something?

deleted 1y ago
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lwidvrizokdhai 1y ago

It was bound to come tumbling down eventually. I've had good times in some of the discussion boards and especially with some of the more chill and creative boards like /qst/. the influence of /pol/ overshadows pretty much every board though, and it's rare to see a thread go by without some racist/sexist/transphobic/homophobic bile being spilled unfortunately.

soygem 1y ago
[dead]

deleted 1y ago

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tannhaeuser 1y ago

Why are we speaking in the past tense here? Is it established that 4chan is going down?

geor9e 1y ago
It is down. It was up in the past. Past tense seems to make the most grammatical sense. But I get why it adds ambiguity about it's future.

helle253 1y ago

Wow, the comments on this thread are much more divisive than I thought. I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. Unfortunately moreso now that /pol/ and /r9k/ have taken over broad swathes of the internet. It's sad to see how far this old haunt has fallen. Lurking /v/ in my early/mid teens was a formative experience for me. It wasn't as hateful as it was, until Gamergate.

h2zizzle 1y ago
/r9k/ is such a weird situation, because its original incarnation prided itself on being an intellectual bastion on the site. The robot meant that you couldn't meme so easily; you had to attempt to write something substantial or meaningful (or at least original). Most were simply discussions, but you'd also get creative gems like futureguy's sobering predictions (well, history, for him). tfwnogf really did kill everything.
throwanem 1y ago
> I've always felt that the 'there are only two internet cultures: 4chan and tumblr' has felt somewhat accurate. "Somewhat accurate" is exactly right. This formulation overstates the number of Internet cultures by one, in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with it.
- lurk2 1y ago
  > in that the deepest and most shameful secret of both websites' most avid users is that they have always been both websites' most avid users. This isn’t true at all.
  - throwanem 1y ago
    > This isn’t true at all. Many will say the same. Still, both cohorts' language and behavior evince continuous cultural cross-pollination from around 2012 (at least; I wasn't paying serious attention much sooner), at a rate and scope both well in excess of broader culture's adoption of same as substantially attributable to either source. That still has to be explained, and I would be curious how you do so, although you'll almost certainly prefer to keep trying to indict the factual claim.

skifreevictim 1y ago

For all of its many flaws and the boatload of trouble that has come of it, I still ultimately believe that 4chan is unfairly maligned. I can't deny that the majority of the website's culture has been tainted by idpol bickering ever since /pol/ was added to it, but I'm always going to appreciate 4chan for being a place where I can write ostensibly anonymous posts and talk with other likeminded people about anything and everything. When you have a funny, good faith conversation with someone else on a website that gives you no incentive whatsoever to have one, it feels good. Soyjak.st is unfortunately nothing like that. It is a website about itself, and itself is a parody of post-2014 rightwing 4chan meme slop culture. It is earnestly what most people believe the entirety of 4chan to be.

aaron695 1y ago

[dead]

on_the_train 1y ago

What a sad day. It's the best page on the net by a wide margin. Hope they'll recover

creatonez 1y ago
It better not recover. 4chan should be burned to the ground. And so should Soyjak.Party. It's a blight on humanity.

duxup 1y ago

I'll ask I guess. People still use 4chan? I recall 4chan at one short point in time being a semi amusing meme posting spot on the web but as always as soon as it was popular it turned into a lot of "edgelord" spam and drama.

Loughla 1y ago
There was a time that if you weren't on 4chan, you missed everything good. I remember staying awake for 20 hours tracking one thread. If you left it was gone forever and you genuinely missed out. 2004-5 area. That being said, I haven't been back since 2014? It was always pretty heavily influenced by b and pol, but it got really bad the two years before Trump 1. Alt right bullshit took over completely. It astounds me that people think 4 Chan is a place for deviants, but Twitter is fine. Twitter is 10,000x worse.
lastcobbo 1y ago
And longcat, don’t forget him
- duxup 1y ago
  Good point.
s3krit 1y ago
I’ve used it probably daily since about 2006. Which is kind of sad actually.

throwaway743 1y ago

/pol is trash. /b used to be good till early-mid 2010s when it became 95% hentai/porn instead of 30%, after sabu squealed and the fbi took over.

truepolak 1y ago

[dead]

partiallypro 1y ago

Honestly surprised this isn't getting more coverage, not just in the media but here.

robotnikman 1y ago

I did some digging and the hacker posted which exploit he used. Apparently some boards allowed uploading PDF files, but the site never checked if the PDF file was an actual PDF file. Once a PDF file was uploaded it was passed to a version of Ghostscript from 2012 which would generate a thumbnail. So the attacker found an exploit where uploading a PDF with the right PostScript commands could give the attacker shell access.

lastcobbo 1y ago
Bobby Tables can’t keep getting away with this
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  Bobby Ignore All Previous Instructions however…
  - dcl 1y ago
    thank you for this laugh
ranger_danger 1y ago
Why would you say how you did it? Now they can't do it all over again when it comes back /s
0x303 1y ago
Got a source? Not doubting, just curious.
- robotnikman 1y ago
  search through the thread on the site where that attack came from. ctrl+f postscript and you will find the post
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  Here: https://i.ibb.co/9mWLp4m9/4chanhack.jpg https://i.ibb.co/9mWLp4m9/4chanhack.jpg

jaco6 1y ago

[dead]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

casey2 1y ago

QA won? what the butt

mikrl 1y ago

For all the sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: “website running 15 year old software gets pwned again”

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago

It truly is an end of an era. I popped in every so often to check the temperature and was rarely disappointed by the level of crazy pervading it. Amusingly, despite it having such a massive influence on internet as a whole including its lingo and memes, my wife did not even knew about it existed until today. I do not think it will be missed by many, but that kind of hole does not exactly disappear without a trace.

Loughla 1y ago
After leaving when it got too shitty, I would go back once a year or so to check the racism in pol, see if maybe b was back to doing things instead of just porn, and read the plainly undiagnosed schizophrenia on the paranormal board. Like you said, not a lot of people in my life have any idea what it is, but it does hold a special place in my heart. It started when I was trying to establish my own personality, and it provided me with a safe avenue to try out different "me's".

perdomon 1y ago

Has Fireship made a video about this yet? I bet we'll see one tomorrow.

perdomon 1y ago
I totally called it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNratwOrSiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNratwOrSiY

doctorshady 1y ago

It looks like it's back up - sort of. Loading very slowly, anyway. After a compromise like this, I'm a little surprised.

ggm 1y ago

Is there anyone doing something akin to the data analytics which happened for the Panama Papers? I appreciate this has overtones of doxxing. I am not asking for "the list" but more if there is an intent to tie up some loose ends about influence relating mainly to /pol/

Uptrenda 1y ago

Watching hacker news try use cold analytical intellect to deconstruct 4chan's jokes and culture (and still missing the point) has got to be the funniest joke ever. Perhaps a little more analysis will yield the answer to understanding the complexity of a green frog or running bear. Though I wouldn't count on it. It has to mean something nefarious. Much like the soft 'schlop schlop schlop' of a dog's tongue lapping up water -- its meaning to us is a mystery.

Loughla 1y ago
From what I can tell, there's not much analysis of 4chan going on here, but more people just sort of remembering their time on the site. That's what this has been for me; a walk down memory Lane to my teenage edgelord years.

EcommerceFlow 1y ago

/lit/ is a goldmine, I’ve discovered so many amazing books there. Everywhere else on the web is algorithm or voting skewed so no real opinions can be shared

a_bonobo 1y ago
I agree, I'd even go so far and say it's one of the best places on the internet to discuss 'serious' books (within all the rampant troll posts). Book discussions on reddit are far too positive when it comes to terrible books, /lit/ will call a bad book a bad book. Plus there was always an undercurrent in interest in 'obscure' books - there are great reading charts out there for all kinds of literatures and languages made by /lit/ users.
weberer 1y ago
They even wrote their own book collaboratively https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28282177-hypersphere https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28282177-hypersphere
coolKid721 1y ago
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2025/01/how-4chan-became-the-home-of-the-elite-reader https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2025/01/how-4chan-becam...
squigz 1y ago
Do you really truly believe 4chan is the only place opinions can be shared on the Internet?

HaZeust 1y ago

There are, of course, many people with memories of 4chan that precede that of mine (oldf*) - I could only even articulate what I was seeing on 4chan at the age I was around 2014. But by 2015 - with only 1-2 years of experience on the site - I noticed a drastic downturn of the authenticity in posts and comments that I was used to. Then, I saw quality of topics and speaking points go down in 2020. And finally, I saw the social fabric of 4chan itself go down essentially right after Omegle was shut down. By mid-2024, I couldn't even trust it for contrarian or less-conventional (or, frankly, brutally honest) viewpoints of topics they purported to care about. And honestly, as things got better in my life and I went out to be more recreational, I went from going on 4chan once a day - to once a week - to once a month - and finally, to only when I wanted to see edgy takes on divisive current events. I'll miss all that, despite all it lost over the years. And I'll miss the element of design and mannerisms in its userbase. It required an upfront investment to even understand how to engage with, and a "lurk moar" attitude. RIP. Edit: It was also very crazy watching small groups of people turn insider-jargon into mainstream terminology. I'll also never forget watching the thread of QAnon's conception in real-time. Crazy stuff originated there - both in substance and meaning.

Loughla 1y ago
I was on there almost from the beginning. Early 2004. It was never good, but it definitely went entirely to shit when all the alt-right nut bags started flooding the site with nonsense starting around 2014-15. I have to believe it was a coordinated effort, it just seemed too immediate across the entire site.

lngnmn2 1y ago

[dead]

zeofig 1y ago

I hope it comes back. Although I don't agree with a lot of what's on there, it's one of the only places you can find hot, fresh, (mostly) uncensored, and unalgorithmed content.

127 1y ago

I left 4chin by the time it became impossible to dodge pedophiles, room temperature IQ and absolute lowest tier trash. It used to be fun to hunt for quality content, but it seems nobody of value visits that site anymore.

plumbus 1y ago

This is some vBulletin software jankness

praptak 1y ago

4chan was never known for high security, early versions were pretty close to pasting raw user input into HTML, which was eagerly used by griefers, for example by pasting right-to-left unicode overrides in their comments which was enough to spill to the whole page.

deleted 1y ago

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Havoc 1y ago

4chan sized site that gets attention from all sorts of unique people...ran ancient php? Ouch

gaiagraphia 1y ago
Makes you wonder what all these 'advanced frameworks' have actually offered the internet.. (hard mode: don't mention advertising)
- slackfan 1y ago
  Trick question, they haven't. (Perl was the pinnacle of webdev and I anybody telling you otherwise is lying, or a javascript programmer.)
- gradientsrneat 1y ago
  Automatic crash reporting with time travel debugging with capability for graphical snapshots of the frontend. Bandwidth reductions involving incremental loading of images, or not having to reload the whole site after a click. Most sites are better off with static pages + server-side rendering + vanilla js though.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

lenerdenator 1y ago

Running a site like 4chan on outdated software is not just a choice, but one of the choices of all time. Really, it was gonna happen one of these days.

RKFADU_UOFCCLEL 1y ago

Incidentally, KYM website is an original dinosaur like PHP, both loaded full of invalid / cargo cult practices, such as blocking proxy users from reading their (mostly read-only) website. Guessing it's bloated garbage made by some kid and this is part of the reason.

smeeger 1y ago

4chan has been completely dead for almost ten years and i dont understand why anyone talks about it still.

deleted 1y ago

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ReitardXd 1y ago

ShartyGods stay winning