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Explained: The demise of notorious online message board 4chan

While social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, now (X), Instagram, Reddit and Snapchat are still thriving despite being around for so long, the ugly duckling 4chan has seen a sharp decline since the 2010s. The online message board was initially a quaint place where people were able to chat about their interests and share images, but it almost inevitably became a den for more extreme content. Advertisement For every harmless post about anime, there were countless from far-right groups or involuntary celibate (incels) spreading hate online. How did it all start, and how did it get like this? Here is everything you need to know about 4chan's demise. When was 4chan created? Created in 2003 by American software developer Christopher 'moot' Poole. The idea was to recreate an English language version of the popular Japanese site Futaba Channel, also known as 2chan. That is a year before Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates, and three years before Twitter came online. Advertisement It was primarily a place for people to talk and share things about anime, but it grew to become a haven for various subcultures. It was particularly influential in the creation of meme culturewith jokes often originating on 4chan and then spreading elsewhere on the internet. Much like Reddit, you can search for particular topics that interest you and get involved in discussions. The lack of moderation and the fact that users were anonymous, while good for users, ended up becoming 4chan's Achilles' heel. Why is it so controversial? Over the years, the messaging board has come under serious scrutiny for some of the content posted on the site. Advertisement In 2004, a board was created on the site which had child sexual abuse images posted on it. Seeing as the site's domain was hosted by GoDaddy, they suspended the domain name. Off the back of this, the site was down for six weeks in the summer of 2004 after PayPal suspended donations to the site, given the content that was allowed on it. While 4chan continues to operate to this day, it has never shaken its image of being a place where people were able to post obscene content on the site without much repercussions. It has also been seen as a haven for the far-right and the incel community with a some saying the managing moderator even attempted to use the site as a recruitment tool for the alt-right. Advertisement A screenshot from the /b/message board where people can only post images anonymously.. In January 2011, Poole announced the deletion of the /r9k/ ("ROBOT9000") and News boards, saying it had become devoted to racist discussions and no longer served its original purpose. In 2014, the site became embroiled in the Gamergate saga, which was a vendetta of harassment against women in gaming. It resulted in "bomb threats, death threats" against certain women. With all of this controversy, Poole would step down as the site's administrator on January 21st, 2015. He later announced that Hiroyuki Nishimura (former 2chan admin) had purchased the ownership rights to 4chan from him. Why has 4chan been in the news lately? A mere 14 days ago, according to posts circulating online, 4chan had been hacked. Advertisement Some of the posts said the hacker involved had revealed identifying details of the site's moderators to the public. The alleged hack first came to light when a defunct section of the site sprang back to life with the words "U GOT HACKED" emblazoned across the top, according to Wired magazine. Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybercrime monitoring company Hudson Rock, said the claim of a hack "looks legit," citing the publicly circulating screenshots purporting to show 4chan's backend infrastructure. Ireland Irish incels: 'Their world view is their situation... Read More The publication TechCrunch cited an unnamed 4chan moderator as saying they had no reason to dispute the authenticity of the screenshots, and the site was only intermittently available on Tuesday. Messages sent to 4chan's press email went unreturned. One of the two dozen or so alleged moderators purportedly exposed in the hack wrote back using their 4chan email address to say that the site had released a "video statement." With the site currently only back up a day or so since the hack, it is unclear what will happen with the beleaguered messaging site, with many saying they should just keep offline for good. Additional reporting Reuters