
Christopher Poole Reveals Why He Walked Away from 4Chan - bshanks
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/4chans-overlord-christopher-poole-reveals-why-he-walked-away-20150313
======
xyzzyz
The spin in this article is pretty interesting. 4chan has been a cesspool for
years. The stuff highlighted in the article, the leaking nude photos of celeb,
and harrasing some game developers, is really mild compared to all the nasty
stuff that happened before, like someone posting photos of girl they just
murdered, or getting scores of people to actually commit suicide, or leaking
nude photos of random women, or harassing some new target every other day. The
article calls these "the good times", though.

If leaking nudes of celebs and gamergate was really what made moot give up on
4chan, it would be much more interesting to read the longer story, what
changed in him throughout the years that made it no longer acceptable for him
to be the admin of the place that hasn't really changed during his tenure.

~~~
exo762
> All of which made his decision to leave 4chan seem so confounding. "I've
> come to represent an uncomfortably large single point of failure," he wrote
> in his farewell post. What he really meant and why he was quitting were a
> mystery.

Huge amount of pressure from outside to censor "the cesspool"? He, himself,
has become a attack target. Something goes wrong -> "need" to censor 4chan
arises -> people exert pressure on Moot. Repeat and repeat. And its not really
about 4chan - it was mostly about Moot: just too much for singe person to
handle.

Nude pictures of celebs were not leaked by 4chan - it was leaked by 4chan
user. 4chan was just a medium. Pics could be leaked anywhere with similar
results (e.g. more attention to celebs in question). Harassment of game
developers goes day and night on Tumblr, and nobody is doing anything about
that. All other stuff you've mentioned are just things that happen in real
life. Real life once again leaks to the Internet - stop the presses!

As for harassment: its the REAL PROBLEM. But 4chan is guilty no more that
Internet in general. Harassment campaigns are happening all the time and even
lack of anonymity is not preventing such behaviour. Tim Hunt and Matt Taylor
were ripped apart by crowds at Twitter, Tumblr, main stream media
publications. People were driven to suicide by harassment on Facebook (and
those cases landed in courts).

There are shitty people who love being offended, being angry about some very
subjective injustice; dignified agitation gives those people reason to breathe
and makes them feel good. Internet brings those people together and helps them
validate their own agitation and actions. Next they gang up. Its simple as
that. Its a question of lack of empathy and echo-chambers enabling morons.

Solution so far is only one - more privacy, less social networks. Avoiding the
danger. Keeping political, professional and personal stuff separated.

~~~
mintplant
> Huge amount of pressure from outside to censor "the cesspool"? He, himself,
> has become a attack target. Something goes wrong -> "need" to censor 4chan
> arises -> people exert pressure on Moot. Repeat and repeat.

According to the article, it wasn't so much attacks from outside to remove
things that wore him down, as it was attacks from 4channers angry at removals.

~~~
exo762
"Single point of failure" means something very specific. System is told to
have SPOF if there is a point, attacking which would cause disruption of
operations. 4channers are ultimate benefactors of 4chan. Talking about SPOF in
this context does not make much sense.

4channers were angry because moot has replaced all of moderators, totally
changing moderation policies on the website. Their ability to pressure moot
were and are limited to voting with legs (8chat) and bitching on boards.

~~~
astrange
More accurately, users are constantly angry because of conspiracy theories
about website operation which they themselves made up. It can't be helped.

------
puranjay
Christopher Poole is a modern day Warhol. Not in the sense that he is an
artist himself, but because he has been so important and influential for
modern culture. Nearly everything that you identify today as 'internet
culture' originated on 4Chan. And as this culture is quickly becoming
mainstream culture now.

He needs more recognition for this. And for all the vile hatred on 4Chan, I
also know it is a big source of support for a lot of people otherwise left
behind by the mainstream

~~~
panic
I think you're misinformed: the real source of all internet culture is and was
ebaumsworld.com.

Seriously, though, internet culture is more than just /b/. The Something Awful
forums (where 4chan was born, after all), Fark and YTMND contributed a lot.
More recently, sites like Reddit, Instagram, Vine and Twitter have become much
more relevant than any 4chan board.

~~~
sentenza
Also, what about Slashdot? The Jargon file? Usenet?

I've been on the Internet since the mid-90s and have purposefully avoided
4chan since I first heared of it.

At no point has it been difficult to avoid 4chan. I gather it has been very
influential in the niche of image memes and I vaguely remember something about
teenagers calling everybody a "fag" a few years back, but otherwise I couldn't
say what the influence has been.

~~~
DanBC
You'd have to make special effort to get some of the Usenet references.

meow? snuh? McQ sigs? borkborkbork? yEnc sucks!

None of these had much lasting impact. There's a bunch of stuff from 4chan
that you have heard of, even if you don't know it came from 4chan.

~~~
gozo
The legacy of mediums like Usenet isn't jokes but companies, applications,
organisations etc. If you grew up during the heyday of Usenet (or BBSes, IRC,
some forums, mailing lists) you had a pretty good chance of going on to do
something in computing. Joke can help people come together but they doesn't
form the substance of a culture. I guess people from 4chan could go on and be
the next generation of marketers or something, but I doubt it.

~~~
9872
Yeah, because it's not as if people like Mark Zuckerberg or Taylor Swift have
any influence on the world today.

~~~
gozo
Not, what I can see, because of 4chan nor because of 4chan culture. By
comparison, I know numerous people that started with BBSes, got involved in
the demoscene, went on to work for and/or start games companies.

------
lucb1e
TL;DR: It was stressing to have to deal with all the illegal or harmful (for
victims) stuff posted on 4chan which people then got angry over that it got
removed. Some hackers were looking for his personal information and posting it
if they found. The site is also expensive with no profit model. And finally,
if something actually did happen to him, there was nobody who could take over.
This move put other people in charge. The fappening and gamergate incidents
were the straw that broke the camel's back after the most stressful month yet.

------
erikb
I don't think you can't make money out of 4Chan. Give this website to Kim
Dotcom and you have a few millions a month later. Also ad providers... there
are certainly a lot of them who don't care about legal and serious traffic.
Think about all the illegal things marketing departments do to get the ad to
your browser and your data back. Reading this article I think moot was just
too nice a person for what 4chan was.

------
saurik
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9199626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9199626)

------
ablation
Sometimes, things just get too toxic to have to worry about. I can't imagine
it was pleasant to have to endure looking after 4chan.

------
ionwake
My only question for Moot has always been this: How did he host the site on a
pc in his room for years without getting into trouble with the law with all
the dubious content being uploaded to the server?

~~~
chippy
The article answers this question by saying that Moot has always fully
cooperated with the law as far as possible, far beyond other social media
sites. Just because users were anonymous never meant there was privacy.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
4chan had privacy. Just not from the law.

------
gadders
Moot has a login here, doesn't he? Be good to hear his thoughts.

~~~
lawl
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923999](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923999)

------
Paul_S
The history of 4chan is always whitewashed/demonised depending on what point
you want to make. Moot is not a saint and not the victim he's trying to paint
himself to be.

As to 4chan itself, it's a message board - it's the people that used it that
have done all these things and if 4chan goes away people will just move to
8chan or other places so all this agonising over whether or not to censor/shut
it down is pointless.

~~~
erikb
The thing is that most people here will agree with you that its the posters
responsibility what content they upload. But the law says otherwise, at least
in my country and I guess in the US as well.

~~~
astrange
Providers are safe carrying most content as long as they comply with legal
requests as they come in and aren't actively conspiring to keep illegal
content up. The only thing you're required to proactively report and delete is
child pornography.

------
jsf666
Still i prefer a place like 4chan where there is true freedom of speech and
not a place like reddit ruled by facistic mods. On HN you also can't really
say many things cause it is moderated, I've experienced it many times that
people will just try to ban/downvote you into oblivion instead of discussing
anything.

~~~
morganvachon
"Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an Internet
forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government can't arrest
or censor you for it. If someone invites you into their home and you start
calling their family names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is
well within her rights to throw you out and shut the door on you. Similarly,
if you go onto an Internet forum that is owned by someone who is not you, they
can moderate you into oblivion because _it 's their forum_.

> _On HN you also can 't really say many things cause it is moderated, I've
> experienced it many times that people will just try to ban/downvote you into
> oblivion instead of discussing anything._

That is the community doing that, not the owners of HN, so I don't understand
why you'd have a problem with it. You are _free_ to post what you want here,
and other users are _free_ to up/down vote you, or reply to you, as they see
fit. That is the very freedom you're crying for here, right?

I get it though: You want a fully unmoderated soap box to say whatever you
want and don't want anyone to censor or moderate you. You're never going to
get that using someone else's forum, so the solution is simple: Build your
own! Buy a domain, learn to code or use a premade platform, launch a VPS or
CoLo box, and post to your heart's content. If you are able to build an
audience and get people to listen to you, great. If you choose not to censor
or moderate your users, great. But I think your eyes will then be opened to
exactly how difficult it is to maintain an Internet forum without some sort of
rules and moderation.

~~~
wtbob
> "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean the power to not be moderated by an
> Internet forum, it means that you can speak your mind and your government
> can't arrest or censor you for it.

No, it's the First Amendment which means that the government may not arrest
your for what you say or censor your speech. 'Freedom of speech' means exactly
what it says on the tin: that you may speak freely. In the United States, the
government must respect your freedom of speech, and private entities have no
such restriction.

> If someone invites you into their home and you start calling their family
> names and pissing all over the carpet, the homeowner is well within her
> rights to throw you out and shut the door on you.

Note that this is the same argument used by a monarch to justify restrictions
on speech: it's his home, and you're welcome to leave.

I think that it's fine and proper that private entities are free to regulate
speech on their properties, but I also think that it's often inadvisable and
unfortunate that they do so.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed. Freedom of speech doesn't begin and end in the Constitution. Its an
American ideal, embodied in the Constitution to show we mean business. But at
every level, we mean that everyone is born with the right to speak their mind.
Opposing that is un-American at core.

To say "I suppressed their speech but it wasn't unconstitutional" is a very
poor defense - that what you did can't be punished by the supreme court. I'm
supposed to respect you for that? Its not just inadvisable and unfortunate;
its wrong. At least here in America.

~~~
morganvachon
> _Freedom of speech doesn 't begin and end in the Constitution._

And I never said it did. I was refuting the illogical leap from "First
Amendment" to "I can say or do whatever I want and not suffer any
consequences, period".

Everyone is indeed born with the right of free speech, and I will staunchly
defend that right. However, that doesn't mean I or anyone else can walk into
someone else's demesnes and start verbally abusing them without at least being
told to leave, which is _their_ right. Or if they like the abuse, they equally
have the right to let me stay and continue abusing them.

To put it another way, your right to swing your fist stops at my face.

~~~
current_call
_And I never said it did. I was refuting the illogical leap from "First
Amendment" to "I can say or do whatever I want and not suffer any
consequences, period"._

You were the first person to mention the "First Amendment".

~~~
morganvachon
No, that would be _wtbob_ two comments above mine.

~~~
current_call
Darn, I can't read.

------
Giorgi
Actually, everyone knows what happened, he got tired years ago paying hosting
bills and supporting board, abandoned site, then SJW attacked and he broke
down. That's that.

