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4chan will always be superior than modern social media to me, for one very simple reason: all posts are anonymous and there is no voting/ranking. Each and ever

4chan will always be superior than modern social media to me, for one very simple reason: all posts are anonymous and there is no voting/ranking. Each and every post must stand alone and be judged alone. You do not know if it was posted by someone you hate or adore. It doesn't get hidden or promoted based on what a bubble voted. You see the post and you must judge it alone.

sph 2y ago
Agreed. I would go so far as to say all the ills of modern social media are because of ranked platforms, such as upvote/downvote-based, or like-based. They turn into echo chambers, that promote witty one-liners over nuance, and any sort of controversial position is effectively censored. That said, HN functions decently well, though in some ways it is even worse in the censoring the outliers.
- bananalychee 2y ago
  HN has a good model for technical discussions, and the fact that it's a forum with a limited scope whose audience mostly consists of technology professionals probably helps a lot in filtering low-effort posting (not to downplay the role of moderation). But when it comes to emotional topics like anything political, it clearly devolves into what you described. That makes me wonder if there are forums out there that focus on current events in politics or economics and successfully filter emotionally-charged posts; the few commentators on X who manage to stay detached are the only people keeping me on algo-driven social media.
lurk2 2y ago
This used to be a selling point for me when I was younger, but increasingly I find myself not wanting to deal with poorly-moderated platforms. I can’t tell if it’s because the transgressive vulgarity that these platforms enable has lost its novelty as I’ve gotten older or because the median user has less to contribute. Every time I try to browse 4chan these days I find that half the posts are repulsive, basically pornographic representations of the world, and the other half is the product of psychosis (that is, the people making the posts likely need to be institutionalized). There are a lot of people who have nothing to contribute to a conversation, and a lot of people who are actively detrimental to a conversation. It used to be that you would put up with the craziest ones for the benefit of finding novel and overlooked ideas, but as the internet has become more accessible, the former group now outnumbers the latter. I would be inclined to think that the problem is that I just grew out of the shock value, but I see the same trend on almost every other platform, too.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  >There are a lot of people who have nothing to contribute to a conversation, While true, the few people who do have something to contribute to a conversation simply can't do so on a highly-sanitized, heavily-moderated forum. The things they'd say would be too upsetting to a status quo, and the status quo will win. There is a real difference between something truly insightful and flat earth theory, but outsourcing that decision to a reddit mouth-breather whose only qualification for moderating is that he showed up to r/whatever back in 2013 before anyone else is not the way to detect those differences. Wait until you're banned without appeal from some place because you called it the master branch out of 15 years of habit then get back to me if this moderation thing is all its cracked up to be. 4chan, as bad as it is, is the least insane of all internet forums, and humanity would be ashamed of that if it wasn't the root cause.
  - tovej 2y ago
    No moderation is still worse. It means that -- especially with 4chans activity-based thread sorting -- the most "engaging" (read: rage-inducing) content gets bubbled up without fail. AND that you can drive away all reasonable people with, e.g. gore or absolutely reprehensible political views. Views that are not only explicitly racist but genocidal. The board is called /pol/, but it doesn't actually discuss politics, it discusses racist or otherwise hateful worldviews. There's no serious policy discussion going on here. Let's not kid ourselves. I was a regular in 2007-2010 on /g/, /sci/, /mu/ and /fa/. The boards had their share of trolling then, but were mostly alright. I cannot recognize the boards anymore. They are full of vile garbage. Nobody is interested in discussing the interests that the board is there for, they're just posting the most outrageous thing possible. It's slop for the brain just as much as any social media feed is. Whatever communities I found on 4chan have managed to survive outside of it, and none of us go there anymore. I don't use reddit, but it is still 100x better than 4chan.
    - throwaway652368 2y ago
      Why do people think 4chan is unmoderated? It is moderated, spamming an unrelated board with gore or porn will certainly get you banned, and illegal porn will get you banned and reported to federal agencies. It's unmoderated in the sense that you're allowed to say things that are against the status quo, but that's a good thing. >absolutely reprehensible political views Also known as thoughtcrime
anonfordays 2y ago
That is heretical now, unimaginable to huge swaths of the Internet.
smsm42 2y ago
This is good sometimes but also horrible sometimes, because reputation exists for a reason. It's a filter, and if you have terabytes of information around which has mostly garbage quality you need filters if you want to make it useful. Of course, reputation does not solve the problem entirely, but at least it makes some steps towards the solution. Otherwise, you're basically on your own against the ocean of garbage, and not many people can really handle that.
ropable 2y ago
Hard disagree. Finding anything of quality on 4chan is like searching for gold nuggets by hand in a mountain of radioactive poop. The only times I've ever seen anything useful in there is when someone else has already done the hard work of curating a post. The core reason why HN is superior (IMO) is the curation and the moderation.

sph 2y ago

Agreed. I would go so far as to say all the ills of modern social media are because of ranked platforms, such as upvote/downvote-based, or like-based. They turn into echo chambers, that promote witty one-liners over nuance, and any sort of controversial position is effectively censored. That said, HN functions decently well, though in some ways it is even worse in the censoring the outliers.

bananalychee 2y ago
HN has a good model for technical discussions, and the fact that it's a forum with a limited scope whose audience mostly consists of technology professionals probably helps a lot in filtering low-effort posting (not to downplay the role of moderation). But when it comes to emotional topics like anything political, it clearly devolves into what you described. That makes me wonder if there are forums out there that focus on current events in politics or economics and successfully filter emotionally-charged posts; the few commentators on X who manage to stay detached are the only people keeping me on algo-driven social media.

lurk2 2y ago

This used to be a selling point for me when I was younger, but increasingly I find myself not wanting to deal with poorly-moderated platforms. I can’t tell if it’s because the transgressive vulgarity that these platforms enable has lost its novelty as I’ve gotten older or because the median user has less to contribute. Every time I try to browse 4chan these days I find that half the posts are repulsive, basically pornographic representations of the world, and the other half is the product of psychosis (that is, the people making the posts likely need to be institutionalized). There are a lot of people who have nothing to contribute to a conversation, and a lot of people who are actively detrimental to a conversation. It used to be that you would put up with the craziest ones for the benefit of finding novel and overlooked ideas, but as the internet has become more accessible, the former group now outnumbers the latter. I would be inclined to think that the problem is that I just grew out of the shock value, but I see the same trend on almost every other platform, too.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>There are a lot of people who have nothing to contribute to a conversation, While true, the few people who do have something to contribute to a conversation simply can't do so on a highly-sanitized, heavily-moderated forum. The things they'd say would be too upsetting to a status quo, and the status quo will win. There is a real difference between something truly insightful and flat earth theory, but outsourcing that decision to a reddit mouth-breather whose only qualification for moderating is that he showed up to r/whatever back in 2013 before anyone else is not the way to detect those differences. Wait until you're banned without appeal from some place because you called it the master branch out of 15 years of habit then get back to me if this moderation thing is all its cracked up to be. 4chan, as bad as it is, is the least insane of all internet forums, and humanity would be ashamed of that if it wasn't the root cause.
- tovej 2y ago
  No moderation is still worse. It means that -- especially with 4chans activity-based thread sorting -- the most "engaging" (read: rage-inducing) content gets bubbled up without fail. AND that you can drive away all reasonable people with, e.g. gore or absolutely reprehensible political views. Views that are not only explicitly racist but genocidal. The board is called /pol/, but it doesn't actually discuss politics, it discusses racist or otherwise hateful worldviews. There's no serious policy discussion going on here. Let's not kid ourselves. I was a regular in 2007-2010 on /g/, /sci/, /mu/ and /fa/. The boards had their share of trolling then, but were mostly alright. I cannot recognize the boards anymore. They are full of vile garbage. Nobody is interested in discussing the interests that the board is there for, they're just posting the most outrageous thing possible. It's slop for the brain just as much as any social media feed is. Whatever communities I found on 4chan have managed to survive outside of it, and none of us go there anymore. I don't use reddit, but it is still 100x better than 4chan.
  - throwaway652368 2y ago
    Why do people think 4chan is unmoderated? It is moderated, spamming an unrelated board with gore or porn will certainly get you banned, and illegal porn will get you banned and reported to federal agencies. It's unmoderated in the sense that you're allowed to say things that are against the status quo, but that's a good thing. >absolutely reprehensible political views Also known as thoughtcrime

anonfordays 2y ago

That is heretical now, unimaginable to huge swaths of the Internet.

smsm42 2y ago

This is good sometimes but also horrible sometimes, because reputation exists for a reason. It's a filter, and if you have terabytes of information around which has mostly garbage quality you need filters if you want to make it useful. Of course, reputation does not solve the problem entirely, but at least it makes some steps towards the solution. Otherwise, you're basically on your own against the ocean of garbage, and not many people can really handle that.

ropable 2y ago

Hard disagree. Finding anything of quality on 4chan is like searching for gold nuggets by hand in a mountain of radioactive poop. The only times I've ever seen anything useful in there is when someone else has already done the hard work of curating a post. The core reason why HN is superior (IMO) is the curation and the moderation.