19 ms·

While 4chan continues to flirt the border line between nsfw reddit and deepweb, what is its moderation policy ?

by __Joker 12y ago

Karunamon 12y ago
Nobody actually knows. People have been banned for violations of the stated rules on each board despite not actually violating them, people have been left alone for flagrant violations of said rules. Board features like names, macros, and so on are toggled on and off more or less on a whim. To say that 4chan's enforcement is inconsistent would be an understatement. But, the chaos is a feature, not a bug. Something to keep in mind. But for everyone else, this is one of the reasons I think seriously that 8chan is the next big thing, it's basically Reddit, but for image boards. Mod abuse (real or perceived) will result in community fragmentation but on the same site, rather than exodus to other sites.
- knd775 12y ago
  Eh, I can't really support 8chan. The admin/owner/dev/whatever is an absolutely horrible person.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Not that I've seen. As far as the site goes, the rule appears to be "unless it's literally illegal or breaking the site, I'm leaving it alone", and everything else is in the hands of the subredd- sorry, sub-board mods. I think this is the only legitimate stance to take when it comes to a UGC site that allows people to set up their own communities. The staff of each board should be responsible for their own moral compasses, with a minimum of interference by the folks upstairs unless it becomes absolutely necessary. The existence of a doxxing board is distressing, but it's not against any law in the USA. I don't want it there, but I want hotwheels making decisions like that even less. I feel the same way about things like /r/beatingwomen (exactly what it says in the title) or /r/picsofdeadkids on Reddit.
    - BryantD 12y ago
      Er, /baphomet is not "a doxxing board." Or, rather, it's not just a doxxing board. It's also a swatting board, and swatting is illegal in the US. https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet You are also 100% incorrect about "only legitimate stance." Hotwheels needs to be clear about what his guidelines are; as long as it's clear what rules the communities operate under, and as long as people are free to decide whether or not they wish to create a community, it's certainly legitimate to have more restrictive rules. "UGC site" is a red herring. I am creating UGC right now in the form of this post.
      - Karunamon 12y ago
        I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that actual calls to swat people have been deleted on that board. But, I can't say for sure because I don't hang out there, and the events of GamerGate have me applying a shakerfull of salt to any negative press surrounding 8chan. And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to. Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own communities"? And since I've hit the posting limit: That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We disagree, vehemently, on the whole "silence is complicity" thing. @bryantd: Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most people don't like. The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally find it distasteful is, to me, incredibly offensive. I don't like the idea of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't talk about that." @bryantd again: Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a strictly different moral obligation in play. I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those, but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could possibly be talking about. That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a few levels higher than most others. Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before anyone has had a chance to read them.
  - Dirlewanger 12y ago
    Why is he a horrible person? Because he was sick of participating on an imageboard where admins arbitrarily decide what does/doesn't get discussed, sometimes based on their personal beliefs?
    - boomlinde 12y ago
      Yes, that is the most likely reason for someone to think that he is a horrible person. Seriously, if you are interested in an answer you should just ask the question without answering it yourself with your strawman fantasy.
      - Dirlewanger 12y ago
        Funny because although I'm paraphrasing a little, it's precisely the reason why Brennan started 4chan. And he has more or less stated this multiple times in writing and through livestream. Christ, you can ask him this and he'll say that. But I'm guessing blindly believing rampantly biased media surrounding the subject is more your style, right?
        boomlinde 12y ago
        I don't know anything about the operator of 8chan. I was objecting to the way that you were asking your question. The form of Why? Because [some unjustifiable reason you made up that is one of many possible]? doesn't serve as a reasonable argument and it doesn't add anything to the discussion other than the slightly passive aggressive tone it has. If you actually want to call it paraphrasing, I'll go ahead and say that it's an outright misrepresentation of the post you responded to, since it contained nothing to suggest that. > But I'm guessing blindly believing rampantly biased media surrounding the subject is more your style, right? Where do I begin?
  - adamnemecek 12y ago
    Care to provide an example or are we supposed to take your word for it?
  - theorique 12y ago
    Check your ableist privilege.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      Don't do this here, please.
  - donatj 12y ago
    Because he doesn't force your morals onto others he's the bad person?
    - donatj 12y ago
      Do you like others forcing their morals onto you? Assume they feel the same. Treat people as you'd like to be treated. BAM - Golden ruled! You could tell me how / why I am wrong. I'd appreciate it.
  - stevenh 12y ago
    Fredrick Brennan, the admin of 8chan.co/8ch.net, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta; he's spent his entire life in a wheelchair. He has endured broken bones over 120 times in his life. He is three feet tall. His arms are severely deformed and barely usable without enduring extreme pain. He was surviving in NYC without a personal care assistant on less than 1k per month. Despite these obstacles, he somehow managed to bootstrap his own project. He was on the verge of suicide before his site suddenly became successful last year. His site fully complies with US law. He immediately removes illegal content as soon as he is made aware of it. He is happy to work with law enforcement whenever necessary. He is beyond reprimand. As someone who is presumably an able-bodied white man with moderately wealthy parents, you're making your libelous and oppressive comment from a privileged position. You are also perpetuating a hate campaign against the differently-abled. This hate campaign has included the following attacks: - Ceaseless coordinated attempts to take his site down via false accusations to his hosting provider that he is supposedly hosting CP. - Similar attempts to socially engineer his registrar into disabling his domain. - Incredibly powerful DDOS attacks lasting weeks at a time, the most recent of which even took down his business partner 2ch.net for three days straight, which is the favorite site of approximately 20% of Japan. Imagine if reddit was brought down for 3 days because someone was angry about something that was uploaded to imgur. - Attempts to destroy his livelihood and drive him back to the precipice of suicide by bullying sites like Patreon into pulling his funding; the goal being to leave him stranded, penniless, and homeless in the Philippines without a personal care assistant. Separately, these are colossal nuisances. Together, they amount to a murder attempt by a ruthless, bigoted hate mob.
    - BgSpnnrs 12y ago
      Perhaps the entrepreneurs amongst us don't like it when someone who the brutality of society would miscast as an ugly little man makes a site that isn't afraid of showing it's ugly side and garners moderate success in, if not financial but at least social acceptance and 'bootstrap' paradigms. Frederick is an inspirational bloke and all these people casting aspersions on his character whilst lamenting m00t's departure for his cultural boldness, despite disagreeing with the content is pure hypocrisy. Especially given the non-inclusive hate mob moniker attributed to GG by a genuinely terrible cabal of shoddy journalists and their transparent smears. I believe common sense will prevail in all of this and there will be no victory fanfares or v-days - quietly the press will mature, the trolls will get bored and good websites and reporters will get justified clicks.
- Amezarak 12y ago
  The last news I read said that 8chan was gone: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/8chan-domain-seized-over-allegations-of-child-abuse-content/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/8chan-domain-seized-... Has that changed?
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Yes, there was a temporary domain seizure. Something like this impacts a lot of new *chan sites for the same reason (somebody posts something illegal on a corner of some board, reports it to authorities, entire site gets flattened). 8chan.co still works.
    - sbierwagen 12y ago
      So does http://8ch.net/ http://8ch.net/
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- vusys 12y ago
  Isn't that what they said about reddit? That mod abuse would result in alternative subreddits? Didn't really work out that way unfortunately.
  - arfliw 12y ago
    That's how /r/trees came to be. There are other examples. Yes, that is how it works.
  - oxide 12y ago
    there have been several reborn subreddits due to mod abuse. it doesnt always result in an exodus, but mod abuse has spawned new subreddits in the past without question.
  - mahranch 12y ago
    Huh? There are countless examples of this happening. I can think of a dozen off the top of my head... Of course it's not easy, but it shouldn't be easy. Mods spend a lot of time building up their communities. It should take an equal amount of work to create a competing subreddit.
- na85 12y ago
  >it's basically Reddit, but for image boards I think reddit has shown us quite conclusively that the "create-your-own-niche" paradigm simply leads to a series of over-specialized echo chambers with perpetually rising levels of groupthink and self-reinforcing, self-congratulatory posting. In other words I think reddit's architecture amplifies shitposting rather than mitigating it.
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    How dare people share content with other like-minded people!
    - na85 12y ago
      You missed the point by an impressive margin.
      - oafitupa 12y ago
        Did I
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    I don't think Reddit's shown us anything of the sort, really. I expect people have a habit of reading too much into this kind of thing.
    - na85 12y ago
      Look, when everyone gets to be king of their own sandcastle, you obviously end up with a larger number of smaller castles. But the not-so-obvious consequence is that because people implicitly know they can just start making their own sand castle, it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever, and they're sick of seeing $content_type in what they've come to see as their personal newsfeed. IMHO the "benevolent dictator" style works better. People on 4chan complain, sure, largely as a consequence of no upvotes and complete anonymity from other users. But they also mostly just "make it work" when it comes to classifying content. On the tech board /g/, there's a surprisingly diverse stream of content that makes its way through. Because there's only one /g/ it all fits into one melting pot and the community is more vibrant and diverse as a result. I think the same happens here on HN. A lot of different people with different tastes frequent this site. If it was simply "news for startup founders" or "javascript framework news" it would be a lot less interesting.
sbierwagen 12y ago
Ha ha. 4chan is about as "deepweb" as http://fbi.gov http://fbi.gov. If you don't think all of its traffic is logged by law enforcement, then you are mistaken. As for its moderation policy: NSFW content is actually prohibited on the majority of the site, including most of the high traffic boards. All of 4chan is not /b/.
- __Joker 12y ago
  Apologies, if the comment seems to about the perspective privacy. Comment intent was about the content.
- VLM 12y ago
  Not just prohibited, but actually not present. /out/(doors) and /diy/ contain tolerably interesting content. The tech board contains somewhat more mixed quality. Being anon, there's not much pimping for karma or upvotes or likes or whatever all over the rest of the web, making it refreshingly honest and realistic. You'll be disappointed if you're in the mood for headlines like "You'll never guess the top 5 things that happen after this headline ends in a rhetorical question?" clickbait sites or if you were expecting the prose of the New Yorker, but its not bad, mostly. There is more to 4chan than /b/ /hc/ and /pol/, although media trying to do a hatchet job obviously disagree. The eternal "best camping knife" debate on /out/ is not going to generate clickbait headlines on mainstream media site unlike pretty much everything posted on /pol/, at least /pol/ in the old pre-censorship days.
Maken 12y ago
It depends on which board you posted and the moderators' mood.

While 4chan continues to flirt the border line between nsfw reddit and deepweb, what is its moderation policy ?

by __Joker 12y ago

While 4chan continues to flirt the border line between nsfw reddit and deepweb, what is its moderation policy ?

Nobody actually knows. People have been banned for violations of the stated rules on each board despite not actually violating them, people have been left alone for flagrant violations of said rules. Board features like names, macros, and so on are toggled on and off more or less on a whim. To say that 4chan's enforcement is inconsistent would be an understatement. But, the chaos is a feature, not a bug. Something to keep in mind. But for everyone else, this is one of the reasons I think seriously that 8chan is the next big thing, it's basically Reddit, but for image boards. Mod abuse (real or perceived) will result in community fragmentation but on the same site, rather than exodus to other sites.

knd775 12y ago
Eh, I can't really support 8chan. The admin/owner/dev/whatever is an absolutely horrible person.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Not that I've seen. As far as the site goes, the rule appears to be "unless it's literally illegal or breaking the site, I'm leaving it alone", and everything else is in the hands of the subredd- sorry, sub-board mods. I think this is the only legitimate stance to take when it comes to a UGC site that allows people to set up their own communities. The staff of each board should be responsible for their own moral compasses, with a minimum of interference by the folks upstairs unless it becomes absolutely necessary. The existence of a doxxing board is distressing, but it's not against any law in the USA. I don't want it there, but I want hotwheels making decisions like that even less. I feel the same way about things like /r/beatingwomen (exactly what it says in the title) or /r/picsofdeadkids on Reddit.
  - BryantD 12y ago
    Er, /baphomet is not "a doxxing board." Or, rather, it's not just a doxxing board. It's also a swatting board, and swatting is illegal in the US. https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet You are also 100% incorrect about "only legitimate stance." Hotwheels needs to be clear about what his guidelines are; as long as it's clear what rules the communities operate under, and as long as people are free to decide whether or not they wish to create a community, it's certainly legitimate to have more restrictive rules. "UGC site" is a red herring. I am creating UGC right now in the form of this post.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that actual calls to swat people have been deleted on that board. But, I can't say for sure because I don't hang out there, and the events of GamerGate have me applying a shakerfull of salt to any negative press surrounding 8chan. And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to. Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own communities"? And since I've hit the posting limit: That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We disagree, vehemently, on the whole "silence is complicity" thing. @bryantd: Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most people don't like. The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally find it distasteful is, to me, incredibly offensive. I don't like the idea of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't talk about that." @bryantd again: Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a strictly different moral obligation in play. I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those, but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could possibly be talking about. That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a few levels higher than most others. Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before anyone has had a chance to read them.
- Dirlewanger 12y ago
  Why is he a horrible person? Because he was sick of participating on an imageboard where admins arbitrarily decide what does/doesn't get discussed, sometimes based on their personal beliefs?
  - boomlinde 12y ago
    Yes, that is the most likely reason for someone to think that he is a horrible person. Seriously, if you are interested in an answer you should just ask the question without answering it yourself with your strawman fantasy.
    - Dirlewanger 12y ago
      Funny because although I'm paraphrasing a little, it's precisely the reason why Brennan started 4chan. And he has more or less stated this multiple times in writing and through livestream. Christ, you can ask him this and he'll say that. But I'm guessing blindly believing rampantly biased media surrounding the subject is more your style, right?
      - boomlinde 12y ago
        I don't know anything about the operator of 8chan. I was objecting to the way that you were asking your question. The form of Why? Because [some unjustifiable reason you made up that is one of many possible]? doesn't serve as a reasonable argument and it doesn't add anything to the discussion other than the slightly passive aggressive tone it has. If you actually want to call it paraphrasing, I'll go ahead and say that it's an outright misrepresentation of the post you responded to, since it contained nothing to suggest that. > But I'm guessing blindly believing rampantly biased media surrounding the subject is more your style, right? Where do I begin?
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  Care to provide an example or are we supposed to take your word for it?
- theorique 12y ago
  Check your ableist privilege.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Don't do this here, please.
- donatj 12y ago
  Because he doesn't force your morals onto others he's the bad person?
  - donatj 12y ago
    Do you like others forcing their morals onto you? Assume they feel the same. Treat people as you'd like to be treated. BAM - Golden ruled! You could tell me how / why I am wrong. I'd appreciate it.
- stevenh 12y ago
  Fredrick Brennan, the admin of 8chan.co/8ch.net, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta; he's spent his entire life in a wheelchair. He has endured broken bones over 120 times in his life. He is three feet tall. His arms are severely deformed and barely usable without enduring extreme pain. He was surviving in NYC without a personal care assistant on less than 1k per month. Despite these obstacles, he somehow managed to bootstrap his own project. He was on the verge of suicide before his site suddenly became successful last year. His site fully complies with US law. He immediately removes illegal content as soon as he is made aware of it. He is happy to work with law enforcement whenever necessary. He is beyond reprimand. As someone who is presumably an able-bodied white man with moderately wealthy parents, you're making your libelous and oppressive comment from a privileged position. You are also perpetuating a hate campaign against the differently-abled. This hate campaign has included the following attacks: - Ceaseless coordinated attempts to take his site down via false accusations to his hosting provider that he is supposedly hosting CP. - Similar attempts to socially engineer his registrar into disabling his domain. - Incredibly powerful DDOS attacks lasting weeks at a time, the most recent of which even took down his business partner 2ch.net for three days straight, which is the favorite site of approximately 20% of Japan. Imagine if reddit was brought down for 3 days because someone was angry about something that was uploaded to imgur. - Attempts to destroy his livelihood and drive him back to the precipice of suicide by bullying sites like Patreon into pulling his funding; the goal being to leave him stranded, penniless, and homeless in the Philippines without a personal care assistant. Separately, these are colossal nuisances. Together, they amount to a murder attempt by a ruthless, bigoted hate mob.
  - BgSpnnrs 12y ago
    Perhaps the entrepreneurs amongst us don't like it when someone who the brutality of society would miscast as an ugly little man makes a site that isn't afraid of showing it's ugly side and garners moderate success in, if not financial but at least social acceptance and 'bootstrap' paradigms. Frederick is an inspirational bloke and all these people casting aspersions on his character whilst lamenting m00t's departure for his cultural boldness, despite disagreeing with the content is pure hypocrisy. Especially given the non-inclusive hate mob moniker attributed to GG by a genuinely terrible cabal of shoddy journalists and their transparent smears. I believe common sense will prevail in all of this and there will be no victory fanfares or v-days - quietly the press will mature, the trolls will get bored and good websites and reporters will get justified clicks.
Amezarak 12y ago
The last news I read said that 8chan was gone: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/8chan-domain-seized-over-allegations-of-child-abuse-content/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/8chan-domain-seized-... Has that changed?
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Yes, there was a temporary domain seizure. Something like this impacts a lot of new *chan sites for the same reason (somebody posts something illegal on a corner of some board, reports it to authorities, entire site gets flattened). 8chan.co still works.
  - sbierwagen 12y ago
    So does http://8ch.net/ http://8ch.net/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
vusys 12y ago
Isn't that what they said about reddit? That mod abuse would result in alternative subreddits? Didn't really work out that way unfortunately.
- arfliw 12y ago
  That's how /r/trees came to be. There are other examples. Yes, that is how it works.
- oxide 12y ago
  there have been several reborn subreddits due to mod abuse. it doesnt always result in an exodus, but mod abuse has spawned new subreddits in the past without question.
- mahranch 12y ago
  Huh? There are countless examples of this happening. I can think of a dozen off the top of my head... Of course it's not easy, but it shouldn't be easy. Mods spend a lot of time building up their communities. It should take an equal amount of work to create a competing subreddit.
na85 12y ago
>it's basically Reddit, but for image boards I think reddit has shown us quite conclusively that the "create-your-own-niche" paradigm simply leads to a series of over-specialized echo chambers with perpetually rising levels of groupthink and self-reinforcing, self-congratulatory posting. In other words I think reddit's architecture amplifies shitposting rather than mitigating it.
- oafitupa 12y ago
  How dare people share content with other like-minded people!
  - na85 12y ago
    You missed the point by an impressive margin.
    - oafitupa 12y ago
      Did I
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  I don't think Reddit's shown us anything of the sort, really. I expect people have a habit of reading too much into this kind of thing.
  - na85 12y ago
    Look, when everyone gets to be king of their own sandcastle, you obviously end up with a larger number of smaller castles. But the not-so-obvious consequence is that because people implicitly know they can just start making their own sand castle, it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever, and they're sick of seeing $content_type in what they've come to see as their personal newsfeed. IMHO the "benevolent dictator" style works better. People on 4chan complain, sure, largely as a consequence of no upvotes and complete anonymity from other users. But they also mostly just "make it work" when it comes to classifying content. On the tech board /g/, there's a surprisingly diverse stream of content that makes its way through. Because there's only one /g/ it all fits into one melting pot and the community is more vibrant and diverse as a result. I think the same happens here on HN. A lot of different people with different tastes frequent this site. If it was simply "news for startup founders" or "javascript framework news" it would be a lot less interesting.

sbierwagen 12y ago

Ha ha. 4chan is about as "deepweb" as http://fbi.gov http://fbi.gov. If you don't think all of its traffic is logged by law enforcement, then you are mistaken. As for its moderation policy: NSFW content is actually prohibited on the majority of the site, including most of the high traffic boards. All of 4chan is not /b/.

__Joker 12y ago
Apologies, if the comment seems to about the perspective privacy. Comment intent was about the content.
VLM 12y ago
Not just prohibited, but actually not present. /out/(doors) and /diy/ contain tolerably interesting content. The tech board contains somewhat more mixed quality. Being anon, there's not much pimping for karma or upvotes or likes or whatever all over the rest of the web, making it refreshingly honest and realistic. You'll be disappointed if you're in the mood for headlines like "You'll never guess the top 5 things that happen after this headline ends in a rhetorical question?" clickbait sites or if you were expecting the prose of the New Yorker, but its not bad, mostly. There is more to 4chan than /b/ /hc/ and /pol/, although media trying to do a hatchet job obviously disagree. The eternal "best camping knife" debate on /out/ is not going to generate clickbait headlines on mainstream media site unlike pretty much everything posted on /pol/, at least /pol/ in the old pre-censorship days.

Maken 12y ago

It depends on which board you posted and the moderators' mood.