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4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

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Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#31

Post by M_Grey »

gnarbarian wrote: post #30
M_Grey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and neither is strict moderation or a userbase that has no interest in that kind of thing, and no strong inclination to respond in kind. Still, the idea that somehow 4chan acts to contain the problem is unlikely. If you lance a cyst, you make a mess for a while, but that doesn't mean you've done much more than expose what was already killing you.

I think it's healthy to have outlets like 4chan where a range of ideas can be thrown against the wall both ironically and seriously. >If you lance a cyst, you make a mess for a while, but that doesn't mean you've done much more than expose what was already killing you Except those users don't just go away. there are infinite places to go, none of which are as big as 4chan. So they find pockets of like-minded users an…

I don't think all of that is the result of the "ban wave", it's been a growing trend for years that people prefer echo chambers. That said, if you go to Reddit or Imgur and other sites, you can see the people from Stormfront, /pol/ and the rest are by no means sitting in those chambers without going "abroad".

The issue above all seems to be that not that many years ago, most people who got online did so with a computer, and even though that is trivially easy to anyone here any extra step from "I want online" to "I am online" cuts down the chaff. Now people overwhelmingly stab a button on their phone and bang... the world can hear you.

We're truly approaching a horizon past which everyone is online, and "everyone" includes a lot of marginal characters. The holocaust deniers who used to slip flyers into library books now huddle in their hug boxes, occasionally venturing forth to make some ridiculous claim and flip out at the "sheeple" who don't instantly see their brilliance. Tumblr is... proof that the Right has no monopoly on crazy.

I don't think shutting it down has any benefit, but I don't think that keeping it open does either. It just is.

Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#32

Post by M_Grey »

Mizza wrote: post #29
M_Grey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4Chan isn't a prison, it's an incubator. See: Pepe.

Prison is a criminal incubator.

Not all prisons, just the ones stuck in the 19th century... so that's all American prisons at least.

Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#33

Post by mustacheemperor »

unfunco wrote: post #27

4chan is viable as an anonymous and ephemeral p2p implementation, 4chan has always suffered from the cost of running the service, which is kept to a minimum (relative to say, reddit) due to the lack of persistence. It can thrive with a peer-to-peer infrastructure since the need for advertising to sustain running costs would disappear, add encryption, restrict content to images and text to avoid the RIAA or MPAA getti…

Hasn't this been tried before? If I'm not mistaken Aether is a similar concept but I'm not sure how much traction it's gotten. http://getaether.net/

Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#34

Post by gnarbarian »

M_Grey wrote: post #31
gnarbarian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's healthy to have outlets like 4chan where a range of ideas can be thrown against the wall both ironically and seriously. >If you lance a cyst, you make a mess for a while, but that doesn't mean you've done much more than expose what was already killing you Except those users don't just go away. there are infinite places to go, none of which are as big as 4chan. So they find pockets of like-minded users an…

I don't think all of that is the result of the "ban wave", it's been a growing trend for years that people prefer echo chambers. That said, if you go to Reddit or Imgur and other sites, you can see the people from Stormfront, /pol/ and the rest are by no means sitting in those chambers without going "abroad". The issue above all seems to be that not that many years ago, most people who got online did so with a comput…

>if you go to Reddit or Imgur and other sites, you can see the people from Stormfront, /pol/ and the rest are by no means sitting in those chambers without going "abroad".

Yes but reddit is just a series of echo chambers where dissenting views are rapidly downvoted, hidden and removed by moderators.

I think you're right though. While the ban wave was a turning point for 4chan and image boards. The trend of increasing insularity and xenophobia is seen across all social media and political leanings. Making it too large to pin on any single event on a particular board or website.

I think it's the direct result of having too many choices, so people naturally gravitate toward the communities with the most like minded views and then groupthink dominates.

It's really a shame that instead of opening people up and exposing them to different perspectives the internet has had the opposite effect.

Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#35

Post by adiabatty »

dragonwriter wrote: post #7
unethical_ban wrote: post #3

I recall several netizens posting concern about the buyer of 4chan, how he ran some other Japanese sites into the ground. Now on /. there is someone claiming the new owner turned ads down and tried to promote 4chan passes, which now don't work. Another person points out that even if you hate 4chan (or especially if you do), it'd be better left intact to contain the culture that foments there. Otherwise we might see /…

> Another person points out that even if you hate 4chan (or especially if you do), it'd be better left intact to contain the culture that foments there. Otherwise we might see /r/The_Donald style posts all over the internet. That you are pointing to a subreddit as an example of the problem that might exist elsewhere in the internet if 4chan doesn't survive to "contain the culture that foments there" would seem to ind…

Containment seems almost fractal to me. /pol/ drains other boards of people who complain about black people and Jews all the time and also drains the nastier sorts out of /r/The_Donald.

/r/The_Donald, in turn, drains Trump fans from /r/politics and the like.

Of course, containment isn't perfect.

Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#36

Post by RunningDroid »

gnarbarian wrote: post #25
rarec wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/tg/ has its moments as well.

I like /k/ and /int/ /Pol/ used to be more ideologically diverse where you would always see communists libertarians and national socialists duking it out in hilarious exchanges (both sincerely and ironically). But a massive banwave in November 2014 drove a ton of users to 8chan where anyone can create their own board. So now /pol/ is the alt right equivalent of the monoculture seen at Reddit.com/r/politics and 8chan…

I've always wondered how to fix this when/if 8Chan's users move towards a peer-to-peer system.

Maybe some kind of "I use this board so I agree to share the content" style feature?

Re: 4chan is running out of money–and Martin Shkreli wants to help out

#37

Post by gnarbarian »

RunningDroid wrote: post #36
gnarbarian wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like /k/ and /int/ /Pol/ used to be more ideologically diverse where you would always see communists libertarians and national socialists duking it out in hilarious exchanges (both sincerely and ironically). But a massive banwave in November 2014 drove a ton of users to 8chan where anyone can create their own board. So now /pol/ is the alt right equivalent of the monoculture seen at Reddit.com/r/politics and 8chan…

I've always wondered how to fix this when/if 8Chan's users move towards a peer-to-peer system. Maybe some kind of "I use this board so I agree to share the content" style feature?

I think it would work like a tagging feature. So if you make a post, you can put a tags on it like #weapons and #politics anyone subscribed to those tags could see your post and reply to it.

Not sure how to prevent balkanization though, undoubtedly people will post to #politics-antidisestablishmentarianism and whatnot.

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