4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google • Hacker News Board

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#241

Post by jandrese » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

meepmorp wrote: post #103

jandrese wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An uncharitable opinion might be that Google hired someone with previous social media experience in a last ditch effort to figure out a way to make Google+ a success.

How's that uncharitable? That's probably why the hired him.

It paints a picture of a panicked Google exec going "oh shit G+ is swirling the drain, is there anybody at all with successful social media experience that can save it?"

Then they hire the first guy they find, even though his site and G+ are almost polar opposites. G+ fails shortly afterward.

Not exactly a fair assessment of the situation.

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#242

Post by devenblake » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:54 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #68

_lffv wrote: post #18

> Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists. It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe…

Why do you think this is not relevant? Everything that came out of 4chan is not a surprise, it was accepted there from the very beginning. It just took proportions that nobody would expect.

I meant the Anonymous group/movement/"which group?"/whatever debate is a bag of beans to be spilled another time.

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#243

Post by fighterpilot » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

solosoyokaze wrote: post #237

filoleg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never called you a snowflake, but your whole framing of the situation reads exactly like what a journo would write while lacking any semblance of understanding of the source material beyond just the surface level. >what you're doing is gaslighting How does me saying that the 4chan isn't as white-dominated as you say it is (with a hard proof, given that you can literally take a look at pictures from irl meetups from b…

> But there are definitely occasional gems in the rough that can be found there that cannot be found elsewhere. Can you give an example of a gem? I've only seen the racist trash side (that's certainly what's on the board as of right now).

I know there was a correct math proof to a novel and nontrivial problem that was put there by some anonymous user (probably not in pol but in 4chan). Forgot details of it

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#244

Post by setr » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

fighterpilot wrote: post #243

solosoyokaze wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there are definitely occasional gems in the rough that can be found there that cannot be found elsewhere. Can you give an example of a gem? I've only seen the racist trash side (that's certainly what's on the board as of right now).

I know there was a correct math proof to a novel and nontrivial problem that was put there by some anonymous user (probably not in pol but in 4chan). Forgot details of it

It was /a/, the anime board, of all places

https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#245

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

okareaman wrote: post #77

I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/ for over a decade and my opinion is moot is a decent guy who sold it after he tried to reign in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the site for it. I don't think Google would have hired him if it weren't for that redeeming quality. I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground United Nations. It's anonymous so people around the world can express themsel…

    I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/ 
    for over a decade and my opinion is moot is a 
    decent guy who sold it after he tried to reign 
    in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the 
    site for it. I don't think Google would have 
    hired him if it weren't for that redeeming quality.

This is my personal impression of moot as well.

Some private pictures were taken from a user's account on my old site, and published to 4chan circa 2007. Chris was very sympathetic and was eager to help take the pics down and/or find the culprit.

Even though parts of 4ch turned into an absolute cesspool, that is not who moot is. He simply created an anonymous free-speech platform.

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#246

Post by ramosu » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

What will be left for Google?

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#247

Post by cygx » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #222

moate wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1- who the hell is "Moot"? 2- Back in the moot-run days of 4chan, it really was a completely different world. All the weird meme-culture we have now started there. /b/ was both the greatest and worst thing simultaneously. You had literal nazis and neckbeards working together to dox pedos. It was just a completely different place from what it's become all these years later.

Since your (1) went unanswered, Moot is Chris Poole's online handle (on 4chan specifically, which is somewhat special, given that users on 4chan usually post anonymously) that he was mostly known by before becoming a semi-celebrity.

That was a rhetorical question, pointing out the incorrect capitalization...

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#248

Post by lightspot21 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:04 PM UTC

the_lonely_road wrote: post #130

superflit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'inaccessible cult.' is about the structure of the board. First time you go there is a Chaotic mess that feels you went back to 90's. Then in shock you start to see the subs like /pol/ then you click and bam More chaos. Threads and threads you are more lost. Then you click catalog and set order Reply-by-count. Then it does start to make sense. You read people talking in two ways. On the text and on the image atta…

I made it to the site finally and but I got wrecked by step 2. Where is /pol? There is no politics section listed under Boards except "Politically Incorrect" which can't be what you mean as I was immediately hit with the full n-word and wish I had used an incognito browser... Do many HN users actually frequent this website or should I be reinstalling my OS right about now??

yep - that's /pol/ - it stands for Politically Incorrect

4chan's indeed a cesspool, and /pol/, /b/, among some others are the worst. In fact, they're called "containment boards" for this very reason.

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#249

Post by bzbarsky » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:07 PM UTC

pmkiwi wrote: post #236

ryandrake wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know--I've heard a lot of people here noting the "4 year cliff" at most tech companies, not just Google. Not all companies give refreshes, and of those that do, it's usually not enough to make up for the initial grant going away. I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.

Pardon my ignorance but what is the "4 year cliff" exactly?

When you initially start at Google, say, you get an RSU grant that vests over 4 years. So for 4 years you are getting your salary and on some schedule also getting stock. The stock can be a quite large portion of your total compensation (as in, comparable to the base salary).

After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make less money than during the first 4 years. At that point the incentive is to move to some other company and start the 4-year clock again...

Re: 4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

#250

Post by JohnBooty » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

iitqkzbjak wrote: post #170

pcbro141 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order list of threads from browsing /pol/ for people who want to know how 'diverse' it is without visiting: - Anti-vax - Anti-gay parents - Goose - Ben Shapiro praise thread with a dash of anti-semitism and a whole lot of "i hope all ni**rs die" - Praising George Floyd mural vandalism - Anti-transgender - Praising white nationalism/white ethnostate - Praising 'national rape day' - Anti-Islam - Anti-race mixing - I…

Racism, gore, pedos, endless endless pornography... Yet when people mention that they visit 4chan, they talk about the 'very clever people posting there'. It's like mentioning that you regularly go paddling in your local river in order to collect tiny nuggets of gold, without mentioning that your local river is a flow of excrement, nuclear waste, and malignant psychopaths.

    very clever people posting there

Cleverness is orthogonal to depravity, right?

Nobody denies the extreme cesspool-like aspects of some corners of 4chan.

The one thing you can uncontroversially say is that 4chan is diverse. It's almost like reddit, where each subreddit has its own distinct culture, mods, etc.

I would say that overall, 4ch does attract... a pretty clever crowd. Almost everything there is layer upon layer upon layer of self-reference and iteration. Meta on top of meta on top of meta. Not saying you have to be a genius to "get it" but I don't see a dummy enjoying it.

I'm also saying this as somebody who doesn't particularly like the place. I grew out of that shock humor stuff about two decades ago.