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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

I saw a comment on 4chan recently:

"Social media was a mistake and the creators should be tried for crimes against humanity"

People on 4chan say dumb shit like that a lot. I'd avoid that place if I were you

The funny thing is that 4chan and twitter aren't that different in terms of hate and troll. They were at some point, but the lines keep blurring. Sure you can find places in twitter that aren't toxic cesspools, but you can also find that in 4chan (/m/ for example).

The weirdest thing is that people in twitter is doing 4chan tier stuff under their real names and faces, which is just baffling to me. I always thought the whole 4chan loltroll hate machine thing was because of anonymity, but I'm starting to reconsider that stance.

Anonymity wasn't why the 4chan hate machine would fire up--it was because a few people could look like a lot of people. It looked like you had a mob right at hand.

Now, there are a lot of people, and bots besides.

Hmm, that's an interesting take. I always thought it was the "I can say whatever and they'll never know it was me, mwahaha the perfect crimeeee!" or something.

People have never had a problem with their names on atrocities when they had other people at their back.

The Salem witch trials are an obvious example, to me.

Other people (or maybe the same people saying dumb shit) also say brilliant things there. Dissuading use of a platform of a certain type over another (like this forum)is irrational.

We need better software for displaying said content, not banning the content entirely.

Also, freedom of speech isn't what most people think it is.

Agreed, the signal to noise ratio is poor, but there are some really thought provoking comments in there. Wasn't some decades old mathematical problem solved by a random 4chan post?

Curious what you mean by the freedom of speech not being what people think it is?

""Anime was a mistake"

--Hayao Miyazaki"

--4chan

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