4chan what is it

Sea of trolls. One was a Japanese collective called Ayashii Warudo, sometimes translated as Nameless World, where users engaged in edgy, brazen banter and banded together to raid rival sites. Across the Pacific, American geeks were eyeing their Japanese counterparts lustily. Naturally, they found their way to places like Ayashii Warudo, and one enthusiast, a New Yorker named Christopher Poole, set out to create an English-language alternative.

Now the site is a. The design remains proudly undesigned. And because each message board is limited to 10 pages of posts, most messages get bumped off the server within a day, if not hours. Users are in it, they say, for the lulz. They make swatiskas trend on Google, tell Justin Bieber fans to self-harm, and leak celebrity nudes.

And Gamergate, the smear campaign against female game developers? Indeed, nearly every evil of the internet begins, or picks up steam, on the site. Registration is not possible: anyone can easily upload data under any name or alias.

With automated scrubbing in place, content eventually disappears from 4chan. The fake stories that start on 4chan have had a direct impact on companies and individuals. When 4chan started a disinformation campaign claiming that Ethereum CEO Vitalik Buterin had died, the company lost billions of dollars.

In April , 4chan circulated phony Starbucks vouchers claiming to award people of color free beverages. More recently, in the hours following the democratic presidential debates that took place in June , pro-Trump communities on 4chan and Reddit encouraged people to vote for lower-polling candidates, including Tulsi Gabbard and Bill de Blasio.

The activist hacker group known as Anonymous arose from 4chan. Users organized to spread pro-Trump and anti-Clinton messages around the web.

Due to the anonymity provided by the site, not all the content is so innocent. There have been at least two arrests in cases where users downloaded child pornography from the site. In one case, it was 4chan moderators who tipped off law enforcement. In November of , a suspected murderer uploaded photos of his victim to 4chan.

The anonymity and lax rules of the site have also given rise to some actions that have been controversial or even dangerous. One user livestreamed a suicide attempt, while others on the message board egged him on.

Another user served six months in prison for posting bomb threats to the site. In , hacked nude photos of dozens of celebrities were leaked to the site, in an event that became known as the Fappening.

At roughly the same time, 4chan users organized a campaign of harassment against game developer Zoe Quinn in what became known as Gamergate.