Worth a read. Since all of this shit happening with 4chan.
4chan was started in 2003 in the bedroom of a 15-year old student from New York City who posts as "moot".[6] He intended the site to be a place to discuss Japanese comics and anime, an American counterpart to the popular Japanese Futaba Channel ("2chan") imageboard.[7][8] Prior to starting 4chan, moot had been a regular participant on the Something Awful forums.[9]
The activity of 4chan takes place on message boards and imageboards.[3][8] The website is split into six categories: Japanese culture, Interests, Creative, Adult (18+), Other, and Misc (18+). These provide for on-topic boards to discuss anime, manga, technology, sport, photography, music, hentai, torrents, travel, physical fitness, as well as a random board. 4chan originally hosted discussion boards on a separate domain called "world4ch", but these were later moved to the dis.4chan.org subdomain.[10] The site has had at least one employee, a programmer whom moot met via on-line Tetris. All other moderators are volunteers.[6]
4chan is one of the Internet's most trafficked imageboards, according to the Los Angeles Times.[11] 4chan's Alexa rank is generally around 700,[12] though it has been as high as number 56 at times.[13] It is provided to its users free of charge and consumes a large amount of bandwidth; as a result, its financing has often been problematic. moot acknowledges that donations alone cannot keep the site on-line, so he has turned to advertising to help make ends meet.[14] However, the explicit content hosted on 4chan has deterred businesses who do not want to be associated with the site's content.[15] In January 2009, moot signed a new deal with an advertising company; as of February 2009, he was $20,000 in debt and the site was continuing to lose money.[16]
Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have a registration system, allowing users to post anonymously.[9][17] Any nickname may be used when posting, even one that has been previously adopted, such as "Anonymous" or "moot".[18] In place of registration, 4chan has provided tripcodes as an optional form of authenticating a poster's identity.[19] As making a post without filling in the "Name" field causes posts to be attributed to "Anonymous", general understanding on 4chan holds that Anonymous is not a single person but a collective (hive) of users.[20] Moderators generally post without a name even when performing sysop actions. A "capcode" may be used to attribute the post to "Anonymous ## Mod", although moderators often post without the capcode.[21] 4chan also has a junior moderation team, called "janitors", who may delete posts or images and suggest that the normal moderation team ban a user, but who can not post with a capcode. Revealing oneself as a janitor is grounds for immediate dismissal.[22]
A quick word on blocking ads
It looks like you are using an ad blocker. That's okay. Who doesn't? But without advertising revenue, we can't keep making this site awesome. Click the link below for instructions on disabling adblock.
