A 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center report linked 4chan’s culture to online extremism. In 2021, the game Minecraft removed a long-standing reference to its gaming board due to its toxic reputation. According to a previous report from Reuters, the breach appears to have exposed internal systems, including moderator tools and identifying information. Screenshots allegedly showing 4chan’s backend infrastructure began circulating online, and a defunct section of the site briefly reappeared with the phrase “U GOT HACKED” across the top. Amanda Yeo is an Assistant Editor at Mashable, covering entertainment, culture, tech, science, and social good.
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He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books. The forum’s future was first called into question in 2022 when Elon Musk bought Twitter, a development that meant there was “really no point to 4chan anymore”, said Wired.
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Night – Mostly clear with a 40% chance of precipitation. Cloudy with a high of 64 °F (17.8 °C) and a 44% chance of precipitation. With no account system and minimal moderation, 4chan allowed users to say whatever they wanted without consequence. This made it a haven for niche interests, fringe art, and uncensored discourse—but also for racism, misogyny, and extremism.
Even without the hack, the death of /f/ was a long time coming. Adobe first announced it would stop supporting Flash Player back in 2017, finally declaring that it had reached the end of its life in 2020. “Everything about this process took much longer than intended, which is a recurring theme in this debacle,” wrote 4chan.
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Launched in 2003, 4chan is an anonymous imageboard where users can post text and images across a wide range of topic boards — from video games and anime to politics and adult content. 4chan was created as an unofficial English-language counterpart to the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan, and its first boards were originally used for posting images and discussion related to anime. While 4chan wasn’t created with any political agenda, boards like /pol/ (politically incorrect) evolved into ideological breeding grounds. What started as “edgy” humour—posting racist, anti-Semitic, or misogynist content for shock value—gradually morphed into serious political alignment among some users. 4chan, founded in 2003, was originally built as an anonymous hub for internet communities.
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- The forum had been notorious in online circles for some time, but it came to mainstream attention in 2014 during Gamergate – the vendetta of harassment campaign against women in gaming.
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- I was a big Tumblr user—all my friends were on there—and for about a year or so, our corner of the platform felt like an extension of the house parties we would throw.
- I received no less than 250 phone calls over the next 48 hours asking if I had a copy of the game.
- Based in Australia, she writes about everything from video games and K-pop to movies and gadgets.
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It became a “virus” that “infected every facet” of life, from the “slang we use” to the politicians “we vote for”, he added. On November 17, 2018, it was announced that the site would be split into two, with the work-safe boards moved to a new domain, 4channel.org, while the NSFW boards would remain on the 4chan.org domain. In a rather dramatic turn that shocked little and yet stunned many, the notoriously lawless imageboard 4chan has reportedly been hacked. A long-dead board, /qa/, rose from the ashes, only to display a cryptic “U GOT HACKED” message.
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- While 4chan wasn’t created with any political agenda, boards like /pol/ (politically incorrect) evolved into ideological breeding grounds.
- It helped incubate meme culture before the word “meme” went mainstream.
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“The free time that 4chan’s development team had available to dedicate to 4chan was insufficient to update our software and infrastructure fast enough, and our luck ran out.” Holderness calls 4chan the internet’s “Wild West” and says its demise this month felt appropriate in a way. The chaos that defined 4chan, both the good and the very, very bad, has largely been paved over by corporate platforms and their algorithms now. Now may be your last chance to lock in today’s https://p1nup.in/ high CD rates. Here are some of the top travel credit cards available right now, whether you’re looking for everyday rewards or luxury benefits. Get rewarded on your everyday essentials, annual vacations, and everything in between with today’s top rewards credit cards.
Posters frequently swap social media handles or Discord servers despite 4chan’s usual emphasis on anonymity. 4chan’s two-week outage gave its development team time to patch up holes in its security, as well as start bringing on more volunteers. The blog states that 4chan’s team has since replaced the compromised server, as well as updated its software. The server status checker on 4chan’s blog indicated that full functionality has still not returned at time of writing, though posts on the imageboard largely appeared to be business as usual. 4chan was founded by Christopher “Moot” Poole when he was 15.
In that sense, it’s a reminder of what the internet once was— wild, decentralised, unpredictable, and often deeply uncomfortable. Users also pointed out that before it went down, users on 4chan were at the forefront of investigating the happenings in the El Salvador prisons. Yet despite this, 4chan won’t ever return to its former incarnation.