So here's the thing: the chan culture in general can be refreshingly great and diverse in many ways. It has cool, talented, and funny people, including fellow HN members (check out the society meta-boards sometime). I've been there for years, and am even friends with someone who admins a relatively popular subchan.
This is not some ignorant hate-based butthurt religious rant here - and I will gladly eat the signed integers to prove it... my problem with this submission is that part of the chan-sub-culture that 4chan represents and helped popularize, the part that resides at 4chan.org is a culture of desensitivity and inaction with regards to the posting of child porn. It's continually posted and often stays up for hours. It's been this way for years. I go back every once in a while hoping it's changed, but as of last week, it hasn't.
We can argue all day about about moot's level of involvement (maybe pg has a comment regarding founders setting the expectations and social norms of a community?), moderation strategy, it's associated seemingly "positive" effects on society at large (memes, hacktivism, etc.), but those are not the issue. The issue is that by posting this to HN, we are both indirectly via the network effect, and directly via advertising revenue, supporting a community with less than ideal standards relating to the sharing of pictures of sexually abused children. And yes, ad-free text boards count too due to spillover.
Next time just post the story/example or something in a Tell thread, and have the discussion here.
my 0.02$
also, here's an archive img of the linked discussion for those still at work: