Shut the subsite down is an effective option. Let the people know they aren't welcome at 4chan.
GameFAQs had their LUE exodus, 4Chan can have their /b/ exodus. In the case of GameFAQs, the rest of the site was able to focus more on gaming and it was better as a result. On the other hand, if 4Chan wants to be home to that element of the internet, they are welcome to do so. But I think at this point, it is fair to judge 4Chan on their acceptance of /b/, much like how I judge Reddit on their handling of clopclop and jailbait.
Nonetheless, companies built on top of community discussions have to face the facts, people will come, they will be assholes. Its a problem that any discussion-based company has to solve.
I understand protecting "Freedom of Speech", but lines have to be drawn at some point.
There's a not-so-well known secret about 4chan that can't be glossed over when considering these kinds of things.
On 4chan, there's 5-10 boards that are implicit "cancer filter" boards. These boards are used to curate the community and prevent undesirable users from leaking into higher quality boards. The cancer filter boards serve as the public face of 4chan; /b/, /v/, /mlp/, and a handful of other boards are used to divert the attention of the unwashed masses to prevent contamination of higher quality boards. Desirable users will start their 4chan experience on one of these cancer boards, come to the conclusion that they're low quality, and move on to a different, usually non-cancer filter board.
Because of this filtering process, the demographics on each board vary wildly. Recently someone ran a statistical survey on several boards (n=~100/board) and found that the average age of users on cancer-filter boards was around 17-19, with the age increasing as you got to other boards. IIRC the average age on the niche hobbyist boards was between 23 and 25.
What this means is that if you were to just remove /b/ tomorrow, all those angry violent users are just going to leak into the other boards, and turn them into another /b/. Now instead of one "problem" board, you have a dozen.
The tldr here is that while most forum websites have a unified demographic across sub-forums, 4chan does not. Nuking the board won't get rid of problematic users, it will just displace them to another board.
Indeed, and this is the same strategy that Reddit uses to "contain" clopclop and jailbait.
And yet, we look at other communities such as StackOverflow or Gaia Online, and while there are some issues... none of them are quite as bad as how the worst of 4Chan or the worst of Reddit can get.
4chan didn't create shitposters; shitposters created 4chan. Removing /b/ isn't going to make hate-filled edgy teenagers go away, in fact, it will just unleash them to ruin other sites. /b/ is a containment board.
Funded by 4chan. Figure out how much money moot spends on bandwidth and hosting costs for /b/. It makes him in the strictest sense, a financial contributor to /b/. (Arguably in part, because he may feel held hostage by them).
BTW: Freedom of speech does not have to be gratis. If you want freedom of speech, buy your own server and migrate over to it there. But as long as moot is funding 4chan and /b/ culture, I'm going to have to say that he's part of the problem.
I get it, total freedom of speech leads to /b/, jailbait, and creepshots. Total freedom of speech allows people to get together and perform dox operations. And you're cool with that? Frankly, I'm not.
I'm not cool with online witch-hunts. Reddit is perfectly happy to criticize Carmen Ortiz for "wrongfully" prosecuting Aaron Swartz... but they are perfectly fine with Sunil Tripathi (probably) committing suicide over the online witchhunt taken place over his name during the Boston Bombing event. Or maybe the legions and legions of hateful and hurtful memes... such as "An Hero" that fester on those boards.
Some speech is harmful, and we should work together in removing harmful speech. I fully understand that this runs counter to 4chan (especially /b/) and Reddit culture... but enough is enough. At some point, someone needs to take responsibility for the development of the website's culture. If it isn't the webmaster who is _funding_ the operation, then who?
There's a very large chance they'll destroy all the other boards on 4chan. Every time /b/ goes down, either deliberately or due to a technical issue, its denizens flood out to the remaining boards and turn them into cesspits until it returns.
Ditto with the GameFAQs LUE exodus many years ago. I'm very well familiar with how things happen.
Part of the solution is suffocating the community by ensuring no one new can access the site. Killing a site as big as LUE was (or as big as /b/ is today) isn't going to happen overnight. It has to happen slower with a deliberate plan.
GameFAQs had their LUE exodus, 4Chan can have their /b/ exodus. In the case of GameFAQs, the rest of the site was able to focus more on gaming and it was better as a result. On the other hand, if 4Chan wants to be home to that element of the internet, they are welcome to do so. But I think at this point, it is fair to judge 4Chan on their acceptance of /b/, much like how I judge Reddit on their handling of clopclop and jailbait.
Nonetheless, companies built on top of community discussions have to face the facts, people will come, they will be assholes. Its a problem that any discussion-based company has to solve.
I understand protecting "Freedom of Speech", but lines have to be drawn at some point.