Is 4chan dead forever? Where are the refugees going?
For those of you that haven't seen, 4chan was hacked:
https://boingboing.net/2025/04/17/4chan-hacked-obliterated-and-unlikely-to-be-back-soon.html
A deadly blow? Will a copycat spring up? Where are the users going in the meantime? Does any of this really matter?
Outside, hopefully.
Snark aside, 4chan was once hugely influential to internet culture and humor, but that era was long, long, long ago. When 4chan became the breeding ground for the alt-right, that thoroughly infected the site so badly that everyone else was driven off. There is nothing of value left on that site, and its death is a net positive for the world.
Of course other imageboards still exist, but I don't think any of them will ever be as big as 4chan was. I hope that none of them become that big.
One of the functions it served was containment... now picture everyone on there spread out on the open net.
Containment was a myth. They've been everywhere else the whole time. They're just forced to keep quiet on sites with moderation. This is only positive
As I said in another comment below
'Containment' doesn't work. That was the reason /pol/ was created, but all that did was rapidly radicalize the userbase, which then spread back to the other boards.
Giving them a dedicated space to radicalize people doesn't mean that the people who get radicalized will never leave that space. Because not only did it spread back to the other boards, it spread outside 4chan. The rise of the alt-right can be directly traced back to Steve Bannon recognizing 4chan as the ideal target to start radicalizing users there. And now look at where the alt-right is today. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is a large part of how we got Trump.
I was very into /b/ from 2003-2009. It was extremely impactful in my formative years.
I’m glad I left when I did.
'09 was the year the right-wing postbots took over. It was a good time to leave. It's also the year after Paul Manafort received millions of dollars from a Russian oligarch to promote Russian interests in the West, and the same year the Tea Party was formed.
Paul Manafort was also on Trump's top campaign staff in 2016.
Even if it is over a decade late, we should pour one out for old 4chan. It was never a great place, but what happened to it is a huge shame. If this really is the death knell, I wanna remember it as the weird anarchic slice of the Internet it was, rather than the Nazi bar it got turned into.
Is "nothing of value" the same as "no longer having any influence" though?
I would say that 4chan's influence is of negative value. Thankfully, that influence is gone now.
I think 4chan had been largely superceded by reddit as the min meme source. And now tiktok et al is largely superseding reddit as reddit continues going to shit.
Reddit is already in the death throes
A deadly blow?
I hope so.
Will a copycat spring up?
History says yes, but if a loving god truly exists, one won't.
Where are the users going in the meantime?
Hopefully outside.
Does any of this really matter?
Only if they bring their bullshit to the fediverse.
History says yes, but if a loving god truly exists, one won’t.
Trump is president. Clearly there is no loving god.
If a loving god ever existed they died before humanity made it to the stage.
I know it's a tiny minority of their culture over there but I will miss seeing screenshots of their wholesome/poignant greentexts. I hope some of those robots move on and turn out ok
Hopefully not here
Welcome to lemmy you filthy animals lol
I was the person who wrote all the posts, now looking for freelance work.
Aha! You were the hacker known as "Four Chan"!
Aren't there similar websites like 8chan that serve the same purpose? I may be out of the loop but won't they migrate there?
8ch×n is worse.
there exists tons of image boards already, if one dies people move into others.
Why would it go away completely? Why wouldn’t they plug the hack and continue on as they were before? Getting hacked doesn’t typically kill a service unless there was data deleted and no recovery option available.
It's unclear if they even can plug the many security vulnerabilities that are now public information. The leaked source code reveals that the site hasn't been updated at all since the new owner took over.
The current owner is not and has not ever been interested in maintaining it. He bought it to squeeze it of its worth and now that it's suddenly going to cost a lot of money to bring back he probably just won't.
That does leave the possibility of selling it to someone who does want to restore it.
My understanding from the articles I read is that the whole platform ran on PHP 5.5, and porting from a version that old to current is no small task.
One possible reason I've read is that the people moderating it have had their identities leaked, so imagine being the person responsible for banning 4chan users and now also they know who you are, seems like a very unappealing thing to volunteer for.
They would need to rewrite it again, the release source code showed about of security flaws. If they're just re upped it again it would be taken down by someone the sake day.
we're all moving to Truth Social.
Bye!
Upstairs
I think we need a place to contain 4chan users lest the rest of the internet be potentially exposed to one.
'Containment' doesn't work. That was the reason /pol/ was created, but all that did was rapidly radicalize the userbase, which then spread back to the other boards.
Twitter, of course. Elon's already made it quite comfortable for them over there.
Where are the refugees going?
lemmy.4chan.xyz
Lemmy maybe
The 8 Chan guys will complete the takeover. The Nazis will stay.
The people that want to continue participating in imageboard culture will migrate to one of the alternatives/older ones like 2channel or krautchan.
Edit: I miss some of the dead alternatives like 420 or brit
I wonder if 7chan is still kicking. Back in my chan days, which were like 15 years ago now, yikes, I considered myself to be "better" than the average 4chan pleb because I used seven instead
Time for a fediverse alternative for 4chan! /s
They should call it fedchan.