4chan, a popular hub for offensive posts, shows signs of distress
I understand that many on HN want to defend 4chan. While I am a firm believer in free speech what I find fascinating is that they paint offensive and disgusting content as humorous and worth debating.<p>That being said, the board disappearing or losing popularity to the point of unusability is significant in a couple of ways to me.<p>The first is that the wild west of the internet is coming to a close. Everything is being watched and &quot;safe havens&quot;&#x2F;&quot;rotting pools&quot; are threats to an organized leadership.<p>The second is that these kinds of groups have staying power outside a name. Can they migrate to new ownership or will they stay? I personally believe that 4chan will slow to a crawl and eventually viewership will die out.<p>The third is about trust. 4chan is not anonymous unless you are behind trusted proxies and&#x2F;or share ip addresses with harmless strangers. However, since the data is stored on the site, they have free reign over what they can do with your content. As a result, 4chan is only a &quot;safe haven&quot; because it is notoriously caustic.<p>A fourth thing I found interesting was that the solutions to the 4chan problem were financially motivated rather than technically. Selling passes or threatening slowdowns sounds like a bullying. Im confident there are ways to offload parts such as using torrents as the post&#x2F;image&#x2F;video database rather than keep it. Turning 4chan into a &quot;protocol&quot; rather than a &quot;website&quot;.<p>But Im not suprised the site will be put in this position. Its basically a place for people to look im the mirror and wank off. It will probably not evolve to anything more than a place of contreversy because thats what makes it successful. Theres so much goo that can come out of free speech but the only things 4chan attracts are insecure rodents that want to pretend they are bigger than they are.