The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan • Hacker News Board

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#71

Post by wpietri » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

krelian wrote: post #41

pervycreeper wrote: post #24

This is not a surprising development, there has been speculation that Poole has been readying the site for sale in the past few months. He has taken action to sanitize the site by suppressing discussion of Gamergate and 8chan (mention of either was a bannable offense), and more recently a purge of /pol/ (that board had been a haven for conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis). The theory had been that he was making the bo…

8chan can't be mentioned because it's a competitor I assume? But what about Gamergate, why is it taboo to discuss it?

My guess is because 4chan was being used as an organizing nexus for a bunch of people widely seen as abusive and misogynist, and he just no longer wanted the headache.

Years ago I worked on bianca.com (early community site; founded 1994, Webby 1997, closed in the dot-com bust), which had a similar unfettered-free-speech aspect to it. I feel a lot of sympathy here.

Committing to publishing everything is one of those positions that is very appealing to a young idealist. But it grinds you down over time. Partly because of the content: unless you're a reptile you are faced with a series of decisions about whether this really awful thing is too awful or just awful enough. And partly because of the people: most of them are lovely and some amazing things happen when people are free to be themselves. But some are terrible and plenty are just broken, and it's those you spend 90% of your time dealing with.

I saw one of the Bianca people recently and we talked a bit about 4chan and 8chan and how thoroughly grateful we were to have left those problems behind. No matter how appealing radical free speech is in theory, at the end of the day you're the person who has devoted your life to enabling awful people to say awful things. And with GamerGate, to go and do awful things as well. I imagine he's just tired of it.

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#72

Post by Mckey » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #64

pervycreeper wrote: post #24

This is not a surprising development, there has been speculation that Poole has been readying the site for sale in the past few months. He has taken action to sanitize the site by suppressing discussion of Gamergate and 8chan (mention of either was a bannable offense), and more recently a purge of /pol/ (that board had been a haven for conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis). The theory had been that he was making the bo…

I think GG and 8chan are the least of 4chan's problems if they were trying to sell. Constant loli, gore, and racist threads would be a far bigger turn off to a potential buyer. GG and 8chan threads were just banned because of his personal beliefs.

What's wrong with loli, gore and racism? I get avatarfags and theri lolis, but gore and racism?

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#73

Post by tacojuan » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

so long and thanks for all the fish, mootles :3

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#74

Post by gamegoblin » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #47

> 2,838 Terabytes per month I didn't realize it was so big. Does anyone have comparison points with other services such as Facebook or Reddit?

In 2009 Facebook did 25TB/week in just photos, and I imagine it's significantly higher now (particularly with Instagram added).

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/needle-i...

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#75

Post by anonbanker » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

earless1 wrote: post #42

Sealy wrote: post #32

"I founded 4chan eleven and a half years ago at the age of 15, and after more than a decade of service, I've decided it's time for me to move on." That makes him 25 now.... and just to think, he's in a position to move on from founding, creating and running one of the web's most successful messaging boards. Dang....

11.5 + 15 != 25

Did this reply contribute anything to the conversation, other than display your strong grasp of both addition and "well actually..."?

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#76

Post by Eclyps » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:08 PM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #54

The problem I see with his retiring is one I've experienced on reddit as a moderator. When someone higher than you "retires" or goes otherwise inactive, yet still retains the power they hold, they inevitably come back. It's guaranteed. Even if it's only for a day. That doesn't sound like a problem at first, but it's a HUGE problem. Why? Because new policies, rules or ways of handling things get enacted or evolve and…

Hmm... I don't doubt that this happened to you, or that it does happen often, but as someone who was in charge of a fairly successful online community with tens of thousands of community members and upwards of a million posts, I'm happy to say that I never went back. I did the same as moot in this situation - I prepped the people who I wanted to take over and made the transition slowly until I was doing almost nothing myself. Then one day I made a post and I was gone.

I didn't revoke my own access, though I doubt that I still have it (this was about 8 years ago). Even if I did have access, I certainly wouldn't want to go back and start changing things. I cared deeply about my members and fully trusted my administrative team to do what they thought was best, and sometimes that meant putting aside my own beliefs and trying something different.

It all depends on the person that's retiring, I suppose, but I wanted to offer something to counter your experiences.

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#77

Post by JanneVee » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

BryantD wrote: post #62

sroerick wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion of Gamergate has been taken down in some form from every major communications platform other than (to my limited knowledge) 8chan and twitter. Facebook, Reddit, YouTube and 4chan have all removed content related to GamerGate

I would state this slightly differently: discussion considered to be abusive by the moderators/admins of their sites has been taken down in some form from every major communications platform. In some cases, that discussion involves GamerGate. It is possible to construct a conspiracy theory in which GamerGate is being censored, but given the existence of (say) http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/ , it's hard for me…

Also to fuel the conspiracy theory we have a recent ABC Nightline piece[0] which has 28,404 downvotes and 1,028 upvotes about the contentious issue. Also heavily censored comments where some of the removed comments only criticize the content of it and don't attack any specific persons in it. While comments like "4:05 That is nightmare fuel. How is it possible for a person to look so grotesque?" still aren't censored.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAyncf3DBUQ

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#78

Post by munificent » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:12 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #60

matthewmacleod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever

That is a legitimate force, but it's canceled out by the fact that when you create your own sandcastle, no one comes to to visit it.

You can start your own subreddit, but it will be dead until you build an actual community there and that takes a ton of effort. In the meantime, it provides you no value—all the links on it are ones you yourself added, there's no discussion, etc.

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#79

Post by Mckey » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

Just a little backstory for ya'll.

Somewhere in late 2014 there was a thread on the /int/ board joking about how moot was apparently having a relationship with a known "SJW" as they call it. Coincidentally, /pol/, the most ass annihilating board for politically correct types was ruined after the relationship leak, chaptas were removed and keywords were replaced with the political opposites.

After this, the /v/ board started calling moot a "cuckold", to elaborate, cuck has been a meme for the last few months on /v/ due to the huge rise of affairs and relationship problems in SGDQ 2014. Moot was ridiculed based on speculation from /int/, but most of all for ruining a controversial board dedicated to news and politics.

GG was never banned on 4chan, GG threads were deleted on /v/ since it was considered spam, the GG threads continued to strive on /vg/, the "video game general" board.

In the end Moot restored /pol/ after harassment from 4channers, which may be the reason moot is retiring.

Re: The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan

#80

Post by pervycreeper » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #71

krelian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8chan can't be mentioned because it's a competitor I assume? But what about Gamergate, why is it taboo to discuss it?

My guess is because 4chan was being used as an organizing nexus for a bunch of people widely seen as abusive and misogynist, and he just no longer wanted the headache. Years ago I worked on bianca.com (early community site; founded 1994, Webby 1997, closed in the dot-com bust), which had a similar unfettered-free-speech aspect to it. I feel a lot of sympathy here. Committing to publishing everything is one of those p…

I once saw content I found to be "objectionable".

Therefore universal censorship should be instituted in every medium to make all communication conform precisely to my own opinions, sensitivities, and preferences.

Edit: /s, people!