41–50 of 1001 posts
This makes me wonder whether there's anything in there that can point to the identity of the original QAnon. That would be a pretty interesting outcome.
For example, QAnon started on 4chan (I believe as a joke?) [1]. Nowadays a lot of 4chan users and traffic have since migrated to Twitter for pretty obvious reasons. Pseudo-intellectual racism has a lot of roots in 4chan (eg the popularity of Julius Evola [2]) that's deeply tied to "trad" content, Andrew Tate fandom, the manosphere and "self-improvement" [3].
Things like the Bored Ape Yacht Club originated on 4chan and it's full of racist memes [4]. A lot of racist and antisemitic memes originated on 4chan.
Worst of all, it seems like Elon Musk is motivated by a deep desire to be liked by 4chan [5].
So the point is that 4chan users (and admins) have a lot of real-world influence and that's kinda scary. It also makes them a target for this kind of hack. I suspect a lot of people will be exposed by this and in more than a few cases, you'll find ties to the current administration.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-...
[2]: https://jacobin.com/2022/12/fascism-far-right-evola-bannon-b...
[3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00732-x
[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpH3O6mnZvw
[5]: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/6/how-musk-ushered...
Jannies had it coming tbh. They were certainly tightening the rope when it came to free speech in the last few years
Always curious to know what kind of speech this kind of complaint refers to.
If you lamented the disappearance of the "old internet", well, this was a part of it, and now it may be gone too. The title is also a fair bit understated. They're leaking the moderators home addresses and work contact info (for admins, who are(were?) paid moderators)
Is it considered part of it? From my understanding, the culture has changed significantly and post get auto deleted eventually, so it’s not a good archive either. The only thing old about it is it’s web design
there's no other online community i know of that still allows fully anonymous posting
the culture changed, but the "environment" causing the culture there to be the way it is still same as the original.
the bump/delete mechanics work well to promote the most controversial, most engaging content, without any advanced statistics or ML.
despite being a shitty place, i don't feel advertised to, spied or in any way abused _by the software itself_ while browsing it
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like it or not, 4chan was a major hub of Internet culture. Especially early on some of the best stuff on the internet happened on 4chan (and a good chunk of the worst, of course)
4chan was founded in 2003. I think reasonable people probably disagree on what constitutes the “early” internet and this is where the argument is. Google had been around for 5 years by this point and I (and I suspect many others) remained blissfully unaware of 4chan for a long time after 2003.
Maybe someone can list some positive internet culture we got from 4chan that I am overlooking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
4chan was founded in 2003. I think reasonable people probably disagree on what constitutes the “early” internet and this is where the argument is. Google had been around for 5 years by this point and I (and I suspect many others) remained blissfully unaware of 4chan for a long time after 2003.
I think anything before Frutiger Aero became popular (and it didn't in 2003) can be considered "early" Internet.
As I said it’s all arbitrary. I might pick the time around Google’s founding as the early Internet, others might pick Yahoo, others might pick anything before eternal September.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like it or not, 4chan was a major hub of Internet culture. Especially early on some of the best stuff on the internet happened on 4chan (and a good chunk of the worst, of course)
4chan was founded in 2003. I think reasonable people probably disagree on what constitutes the “early” internet and this is where the argument is. Google had been around for 5 years by this point and I (and I suspect many others) remained blissfully unaware of 4chan for a long time after 2003.
If you lamented the disappearance of the "old internet", well, this was a part of it, and now it may be gone too. The title is also a fair bit understated. They're leaking the moderators home addresses and work contact info (for admins, who are(were?) paid moderators)
[flagged]
This makes me wonder whether there's anything in there that can point to the identity of the original QAnon. That would be a pretty interesting outcome.
Aren't we 99% sure that was a Ron Watkins grift now?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> them and their close ones are certainly going to be exposed to a whole lot of viciousness soon Isn't viciousness the notorious bread and butter of 4chan?
Live by the sword, die by the sword I would say. You don't get to enjoy raising leopards and also get to be surprised when you become lunch one day
Any increase in human suffering is unfortunate, regardless of one’s take on just desserts or karma or whatever.