Honestly, that didn't help. There's a wide type of "controversy" there, and I don't see how 4chan are inherent to any of them, they could've been done via any forum. Or maybe I missed something, specificity would be good.

But they weren't done via any forum, they were done via 4chan. The community makes a forum.

It's a well known forum with a lot of users, to blame the "4chan community" would seem to be either a fallacy of composition or, ironically, of division, depending how the claim is laid out.

I'm also not sure how the site admins would stop them?

They have been told by mainstream media that you are supposed to hate it. Thats it. Its totally irrational.

Certainly has nothing to do with the toxic userbase of at least some of the boards

I bet you 90% of the haters have never even been to the website.

i don't know why you'd bet that

because my religious redneck family thinks 4chan is a bunch of hackers who hate the elderly because fox news mentioned "ok boomer" meme once.

because ive met many people in real life who think its evil but have never been on it or have even seen it.

every normie hates 4chan, but none of them have never been there.

This still stings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373

Even more true in 2025

made me LOL

>Ask HN: Why is nobody using [obscure niche technology from the 80s]?

>Why [popular technology] is [unexpected opinion]

>Why it's impossible to use PHP even though millions of people are doing great things with it

I hope this isn't too contentious but I'll try to cover most things. I've posted this a few times, but I checked out 4Chan about twice in the early days and saw CSAM both times and it gave me personally a visceral hatred of the site. I've heard it got better/that's not representative but it's a hard thing to shake. The origin of the site is also supposedly Moot getting kicked off SomethingAwful for posting 'lolicon' (child anime porn). They've also gone after and doxxed pedophiles though, so the sites relationship with that sort of content is... complicated. I think most of the worst ended up moving to 4Chan clones quite awhile ago because it really splintered again at some point and became known as the cleaner Chan board.

It's also known for its extremely abrasive mildy sociopathic culture and 4Chan posters have a very samey 'posting voice' where if you don't like it you can hate it. It permeates a lot of the internet, but 4chan is kind of seen as the epicenter. I think it also gets blamed for a lot of negative internet culture like doxxing and choosing targets to harass, although I'm not sure how much of that was actually 4Chan. I think most of those people moved on to Kiwifarms. 4Chan probably gets some hate for things that other Chan sites have like Qanon in a sort of 'you started this' way.

And finally the politics are complicated. It actually used to be slightly left leaning or at least libertarian or anarchist, but over the years pol in particular has been known to be hard right wing. It definitely seems like they had a shift in political tone for the (IMO) worst at some point.

Personally I won't hide that I'm a hater and an unapologetic curmudgeonly old man, but that's my perception. On the other hand if you think the CP stuff is overblown, don't care about the negatives because there are apparently good boards there that are insulated, or are just hard right yourself then it is one of the last major discussion boards on the net. Some of that's probably out of date (like I said I gave up on it pretty quickly) but I'd wager most people with negative opinions are thinking of one or more of those. I'd be interested if any haters have other reasons.

> It actually used to be slightly left leaning or at least libertarian or anarchist, but over the years pol in particular has been known to be hard right wing.

If your bar doesn't kick out nazis, your bar becomes the nazi hangout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

That's not what the paradox of tolerance says, nor is it relevant. Popper gave two explicit standards for working out who is intolerant:

- they shun debate ("begin by denouncing all argument", "forbid their followers to listen to rational argument")

- they use violence instead ("answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols")

I, for one, prefer having peaceful Nazis to the other sort, and to - as Popper puts it - "counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion". Unless 4chan officials or the Nazis on 4chan were meeting both standards then I fail to see a connection.

Were 4chan or the 4chan Nazis doing so?

ie. if you're shunning debate and deplatforming people based on ideological disputes, you're also a nazi.

In reality, the rest of the bar laughs at and mocks the one Nazi and he probably stops coming or at least shuts up, even though he hasn't been banned. This is how most non-/pol/ generals have handled it, and it works. It's how plenty of real bars across America handle it too, when the bar and patrons earnestly subscribe to free speech as a aspirational principle for guiding human behavior, not limited to simply the first ammendment binding the hands of government. If somebody wants to reveal themselves to be a dumbass, that's entertainment for everybody else.

I don't know what CSAM is and after reading the rest of your post I don't want to Google it

"Child Sexual Abuse Material"

Thanks, that gives me something to go on. I appreciate the time you took with your reply.

Because people think /pol/ is 4chan, and it's easier to think that and what others say about something than to invest time into looking into something they were uninterested in looking into to begin with