Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents | Hacker News Reader

Meme group on Discord is focus of uproar over leaked Pentagon documents

nytimes.com

94 pointshi5eyes310 comments

http://web.archive.org/web/20230412204156/https://www.nytime...

NYT gets so much mileage out of “researchers say” and “experts say” yet they never cite anyone

> Dark humor about race or ideology can eventually shape the beliefs of impressionable young people, and innocuous memes can be co-opted into symbols of hatred, researchers say.

Immediately following this paragraph is a quote from a researcher:

> “If you’re a young man with no prospects hanging out on 4chan, you’re definitely on some Discords and probably some pretty dark Discords,” said Dale Beran, a lecturer at Morgan State University and the author of “It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.”

Hmmm this harkens back to “movies influence kids” “music influences kids”, video games influence kids” etc that many people argued in order to censor aspects of music, movies and video games.

"Dale Beran - Lecturer/ Animation Coordinator , Screenwriting and Animation"

Researcher, perhaps, but seems to not be what his credentials or college role is about.

https://www.morgan.edu/screenwriting-and-animation/faculty-a...

Whether it's valid or not, authoring a book on a particular subject usually qualifies someone as an expert on a subject. Especially if it is on an esoteric and modern subject like online socializing.

I know of someone who published a book on Golang in 2010. The rating of that book is sitting in the 3s out of 5 stars last I checked 6 years ago. Is he an expert at Go? Not in my most humblest opinion, is the content of the book good? Also a no in my honest, must charitable view. How far did he get with showing people how to program with Go? About as far as you'd get in 2 hours on the golang docs even considering a very poorly skilled college student doing the exercises. There's maybe 170 pages in the book. I'm almost certain the book has not reached even 200 sales at the highest.

Is he really considered an expert to you, solely because of the publishing of a book? Here it is by the way: https://www.amazon.com/Go-Programming-John-P-Baugh/dp/145363...

I know that's not necessarily your view, but this is the standard we are working with

Some people write a book to be able to self promote.

I was on a meetup, where 4 scrum master "experts" were doing some presentation and they gave out their book. It was around 100 pages with very big font :) written by 4 people. So basically 4 bad essays of 25 page each.

But hey, they could then tell to HR that they (co)wrote a book on agile methodologies. Also they (co)hosted lectures for meetup attendees.

The more interesting part, is that this wasnt even the worst book about agile / scrum that I have read...

Someone I know did that too. Published a blog post then started adding “author” to their credentials. Spoke at a local 10 person meetup about some node.js framework at the time and promptly added “speaker” to the list.

As I said, I don't necessarily think that writing a book is a valid criteria, but people that do so are often used as expert sources in journalism or even court cases. It's not like you can get someone who has a phd in 4chan to interview.

Chat GPT write me a book on the following topic. Instant expert, just add hot water.

It's been years now that AI can write books. Writing a book nowadays doesn't mean anything. "Doing your own research" is laughed at now, but this is actually used to be the job of journalists to do that. That doesn't mean not using experts to help understand complex subjects. But what journos like the NYT is fishing experts and using them as a "proof" is simply arguing from a conclusion.

"Lecturer" is a non-tenure-track position that means you get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a class. This person doesn't even have a PhD.

> "Lecturer" is a non-tenure-track position that means you get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a class.

In the US (which this person is).

In most of the rest of the English-speaking world, the majority of full-time academics are "lecturers" (or even "senior lecturers"), expected to do both teaching and research, and a PhD is usually required (but exceptions have occasionally been made). An "adjunct/visiting/associate/guest lecturer" is a different thing, that's generally a part-time or even honorary position, and there are no expectations about research output.

Part of this is because Americans inflated the title of professor to the point of making almost every full-time/permanent academic one, whereas in the UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there. (For most fields–medicine has a lot more professors, but clinical professor is generally a giveaway they spend the majority of their time treating patients, and teaching and research is a side-gig.)

Although–I wonder if everyone in the US uses the terminology in the same way. It is not unheard of for some university out there to just do something weird which others don't. Not saying that's true in this person's case, but not impossible.

> UK and Commonwealth professor was reserved for the most senior rung of academics, with associate professor for those part-way there.

This is the same in the US. Tenure-track starts with assistant professor. Associate professor is when you first get tenure. Finally after having tenure for 5-7 years you can become full professor.

> This is the same in the US. Tenure-track starts with assistant professor. Associate professor is when you first get tenure. Finally after having tenure for 5-7 years you can become full professor.

It is different in the US. In the US, someone who just finished their PhD and wants an academic career will look for an “assistant professor” entry level academic job. Whereas, in the UK/Commonwealth, the entry level academic job is a “lecturer”-which is equivalent to US “assistant professor”. In the UK system, the first promotion is not to “associate professor”, it is to “senior lecturer”. Then a senior lecturer looks to get promoted to “associate professor”-which is actually a more senior/exclusive title than US “associate professor”. So this is my point-the US calls junior academics “assistant/associate professor”, whereas traditionally in the UK/Commonwealth they aren’t a type of “professor”, they are a type of “lecturer”. An “associate professor” in the UK/Commonwealth is roughly equivalent to a full professor in the US, so a UK/Commonwealth full professorship is (in itself) more prestigious than a US one-a UK/Commonwealth full professor is more like a “distinguished professor” in the US

Furthermore, it’s not unheard of in UK/Commonwealth system for people to get stuck at the senior lecturer level and never get promoted to associate professor-a person who retires as a senior lecturer hasn’t reached the heights of academia, but they haven’t been a failure. By contrast, the US hands out senior academic titles much more easily, which makes the a failure to reach them look like much more of a career failure.

As always there are exceptions: a small number of UK/Commonwealth universities have been adopting US-style academic titles (such as “assistant professor”), and Canada has always been far more US-influenced than the rest of the Commonwealth

The main distinction as far as I understand is tenure / not-tenure, everything else is just window dressing. Is Senior Lecturer when they're awarded tenure in the UK?

Generally it's failure to get tenure (or failure to get on the tenure track) that's considered a failed academic career. Many professors might stop at the associate level and not go on to full professor, but they don't care because they have tenure.

> The main distinction as far as I understand is tenure / not-tenure, everything else is just window dressing. Is Senior Lecturer when they're awarded tenure in the UK?

The UK abolished academic tenure in 1988. So nowadays nobody gets tenure in the UK.

In the 21st century, “tenure” is primarily a North American concept (US and Canada), the rest of the English-speaking world doesn’t have it

The main point of tenure in the US is once you’ve got it, you now can’t be fired without reasonable cause. In many other countries, that’s not a special perk for academics, it is a standard aspect of employment law for all non-temporary employees - making the whole idea of “tenure” rather meaningless

I really doubt there’s any academic rigor behind that tbh

The original claim was the NYT abuses anonymous sources without citing anyone. The NYT, in the only occurrence of "researchers say" in the article, literally quote a person who's written a book on the subject on the next line.

We can move the goal post and now debate the person's credentials, but we can do that because we know their name.

He’s not a researcher though. He’s a lecturer.

I was generally under the impression that lecturers are not normally research personnel.

they sometimes get pulled in to begrudgingly teach a class or two

I think terminology varies a bit by university (and maybe even by department within a university). At the college I attended, I learned from discussing with a few professors that the computer science department hired professors either for the "tenure track" or the "lecture track" (although no distinction in terms of title was presented to us as students, as far as I could tell). "Tenure track" professors were required to teach one course per semester and produce research, whereas "lecture track" professors were required to teach two courses per semester and had no requirement for research (although they were welcome to pursue it if they desired). As the naming implies, lecture track professors were not eligible for tenure, and most of the professors in the department were on the tenure track. This meant that the professors on the lecture track intentionally passed up the opportunity for tenure in order to focus their time on teaching. I personally found the courses I took with lecture track professors to benefit from the passion they had for this part of the profession. There were definitely tenure track professors who also cared as much about teaching and put in the same amount of effort into the course they taught each semester, but the only courses I took that felt like they suffered due to a lack of effort on the part of the professor were taught by tenure track professors. The sample size was much larger than for lecture track professors though, so I don't know for sure whether it's actually more likely that tenure track professors to "phone it in" for their courses, but it certainly seems like it would make sense.

As for the lecturer mentioned in the parent comment, I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions about whether they research or not from their title without looking into how things work at their institution/department, but at least in my experience people with the title "lecturer" tend to actually engage with students a lot more, so I wouldn't be surprised if they spoke with the journalist with the intention of sharing their own first-hand observations rather than from a research perspective.

I almost forgot all this nonsense originated at somethingawful. That's really weird thinking back. I still say little jokes I first heard on there once in a while. People playing video games get so mad if you say "Get the power up and win the game!" haha

>If you’re a young man with no prospects

"The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose." — James Baldwin.

if only they would read Baldwins work, but being an angry and lost online today seems to breed a hatred of someone who cared to talk about the lives of black gay men.

"A child that is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"

African Proverb

Blaming goons for Trump is pretty next level. That’s butterfly effect stuff if it’s true.

Shiba, Amezou, Nishimura, and Kosugi; Kyanka and Poole and Degrippo; the nanashi, the goons, and anons: all pawns in Hideaki Anno's master plan, set in motion by the prophetic creation of moot's waifu of Axis-American descent.

>“It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.”

CNN and reddit arguably did more than 4chan to get trump elected. They couldn't shut up about him and they have way more reach than 4chan.

The news media gave him $2 billion in free media coverage during his first campaign alone. Does 4chan come anywhere close to that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_2016_Uni...

> innocuous memes can be co-opted into symbols of hatred, researchers say.

It's beside the point, but does anybody actually see social studies and the like as "science" anymore when people in them get bullied and silenced and have their careers destroyed if they think or say the wrong thing? When things that go against left-wing beliefs don't get published? When an overwhelming majority of them are on the same political spectrum? After the grievance studies affair? I see it more as a propaganda machinery and after all if you tortute the data long enough, it will confess. I basically just ignore their research whenever I see this sort of stuff.

I feel like a lot of stuff fhsg "gods against left-wing beliefs" gets silenced primarily when it's a bad-faith argument in the first place, but yeah. I'd personally like more studies on e.g. factors associated with why some trans people on HRT get fatigue, and how to avoid it.

> I feel like a lot of stuff fhsg "gods against left-wing beliefs" gets silenced primarily when it's a bad-faith argument in the first place, but yeah.

"How much of the recent rise in transgenderism can be attributed to people being more accepting vs how much is peer pressure"

Such a study won't see the light of the day any time soon. Yet, I wouldn't classify it as bad faith, as kids/teens are VERY impressionable. (And then there's the whole detrans thing)

Would you classify it as bad faith?

That's a great example. Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around. The orthodoxy will say that the discrimination that trans people face is the reason for the prevalence of mental illness among them. We won't find out anytime soon, since it's a belief that is held sacred among the very people studying the topic, and at the same time there's a push to treat children with hormones when they get funny ideas (see Tavistock Clinic scandal). Thinking back when I grew up and my sister kept crying saying she wanted to be a boy – mainly because she wanted to fit in with her three brothers – it's a terrifying thought what could have happened had she been born a decade later.

Social studies aren't out to find truth. They're out to confirm their beliefs, basically working to justify their own jobs.

> Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around.

[We have the data](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909367116), being trans is identifiable as early as 2-3yo, from the moment gender differences in behavior become apparent, long before any capacity to comprehend and adhere to complex expectations of boogeyman "transtrender parents".

You want to be treated as arguing in good faith, but fail to research the subject, propose questions that assume the conclusion, bring up vague anecdotes contrary to the statistics you're unwilling to consider, and disregard the fact that transgender children suffer from lack of treatment just as hard as wrongly treated cisgender children.

> long before any capacity to comprehend and adhere to complex expectations of boogeyman "transtrender parents".

This isn't what the GP is arguing, did you reply to the wrong thing?

You quoted their question:

> Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around.

The study you provided - whilst interesting - doesn't answer it or even attempt to answer in its purpose.

The study shows 3-12 year olds who are "socially transitioned and live in families that that affirmed their child’s current gender identity through a social transition" have a strong affinity towards their gender, just as non trans children who have their families affirmation of their gender do.

It seems odd to me you're arguing bad faith when it seems you're acting that way by misdirectly and providing studies irrelevant to the point as evidence of the GPs lack of research.

Y'know... nobody ever cares that trans kids suffer from lack of treatment as hard as cis kids from being given it(a way less common situation than the reverse), nobody cares that kids are abused left and right in much more common ways, nobody cares that most people transitioning are adults. What people care about is fuel to put validity of trans people and their agency to question.

It's not so much that discordant views get silenced, it's that everyone is aware that in the current climate, almost anything can - and WILL - be used to fuel discrimination. Such a study being approved alone would be taken as proof that "even the left finally admits transgenderism is hurting children" by a LOT of people. Even the way you titled the hypothetical study is de facto begging the question.

I mean yeah, these things should be studied. But it's not as though we have no science. E.g. detransition- we know it's uncommon, and mostly due to external circumstances, not regret. In light of this, is proposing to study specifically whether kids are getting pressured into transition(instead of "factors leading to transition"), in disregard of the fact that we already know most benefit from and don't regret it, "bad faith"? Yeah. Kinda.

The science very much so supports the rationale and safety of transition, but everyone and their dog has that one anecdote, that one outlier news story that convincingly prove how dangerous giving people agency over their gender is, that one "but what about the kids!" concern.

Well, if you are young and hopeless, they have no help or solutions for you, but at least a rubber stamp..

And then, when the hotpot they ve been steering for a generation boils over, its all clutching pearls and "how could this happen".

Well they need to throw in the "researchers say" statements, otherwise their articles would almost consist entirely of anecdotal human interest stories!

"sources familiar with the situation"

“Nine people familiar with his thinking”

So that phrase actually means something when you are dealing with real journalistic news organizations like NPR or NYT for example. I believe at the NYT, everything of consequence must be double sourced. And in the case of confidential sources, the reporter must reveal the source to their editor so that there is another set of eyes confirming validity. So it's not quite as nebulous and useless as some make it out to be.

When a reporter wants to insert his or her own opinion, they simply refer to a random "expert" or "researcher" of said subject. So when you see such wording, just think in your head, "I say."

Notwithstanding the New York Times calling 4chan far-right and blatantly editorializing (seriously, if this is a news piece, why is there commentary about Discord's moderation policy?), I am most interested in whether the leaks are true.

Has the White House been grossly over-representing Ukraine's chances? Will Ukraine be unable to protect their airspace after late May?

Leaks are different from hacks in that they are released secretly Vs stolen. Usually a leak has a purpose.

Often it's political, and political messaging particularly about war is propaganda.

The only difference between a leak and hack is whether there was one person trusted with the information knowingly involved in the transfer chain to publication or not.

We don't have different words as to motives of those doing the leaking. A leak can be to support the status quo or hostile to it or anything else besides.

During the invasion Crimea Obama refused to send military support because it would just help create a long war of attrition, which Russia has more than enough the ressource to sustain, with the same outcome.

Well 4chan sure as hell isn't full of Marxist college students quoting theory at each other nor is it milquetoast CNN-style liberals. It is predominantly right wing (in an edgy 7th grader sort of way) to the point of needing kill files to be legible like the old days of Usenet.

At the very least it's not more anarchist leaning like it was 15 years ago.

>"Losers. That’s who the U.S. government really has to fear.”

The New York Times has published, by my count, 15 articles on this leak in the past 7 days.

Could you explain what you’re implying because I don’t get it

I think the implication here is that, if you write 15 articles in 1 week about people you claim are "losers", maybe you're the loser.

It strikes me as somewhat petty that the Times apparently considers the information in the leak important enough to cover so thoroughly, yet they think so little of the source of that information that they'll interview a 20 year old comedy vlogger (haven't watched channel) in the UK to get some quotes painting that source as some sort of right wing extremist group. Maybe they are, but I did not see evidence of such laid out in this article.

>But the unfiltered, edgy banter in the wow_mao server, which is called the End of Wow Mao Zone, and in many other servers like it, can sometimes veer into darker territory. Those servers are sometimes described as the less venomous cousins of 4chan, the far-right anonymous message board known for sharing conspiracy theories and popularizing QAnon. Many 4chan users split their time between Discord and 4chan, sharing digital memes and chatting with friends.

Emphasis added.

>"Losers. That’s who the U.S. government really has to fear.”

So... they fear NYT? Does this count as a publication threatening the government?

In their first article, the documents they published and wrote about were the versions that had been doctored in Russia's favor.

So they are getting enough clicks to keep going.

I am sad that Discord has replaced IRC as the chatroom of the internet's subculture.

IRC lacks widespread support for things like roles, reactions, avatars, threads, showing chat history from before someone enters a channel, search history, and having video and voice chat without piggybacking on top of DCC. There also aren't sync issues within Discord that cause things like netsplits which are somewhat common on IRC

I know some newer versions of the IRC spec try to address at least some of these, but as far as I'm aware, they aren't very widely supported

IRC is also just not ready for a multiple device lifestyle. People expect to log in and have the same stats across devices, that’s very hard to do with IRC.

Technology improved, people got Features and Devices, they wanted to use their Features and Devices, and they switched to the service that gave them their Features on their Devices. There's no mystery.

The average person doesn't care about federation or an open protocol or whatever. They probably don't even understand those things and they don't want to understand them. They just want to chat with their friends and send emojis and not get upset that things don't work. IRC, by all accounts, fails to do—out of the box—all of those things (well).

Me too. Judging by Discord's tendencies toward speech policing and censorship there will be plenty of groups staying out of it though. A large part of the previous subculture will probably be banned promptly on Discord.

They just go to Telegram

There is a very good Lawfare podcast with the Bellingcat investigator on that https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-rid-and-toler-la... which goes into more details on this.

Wow that was content free. What is the actual info that was leaked?

The notable bit was the killed in action numbers from the conflict: 17k Russian troops, and 70k on the Ukrainian side. Estimates from US and European leaders have been all over the map, some in this neighborhood, but others saying more Russians were KIA than were Ukrainians.

Those numbers are edited. Someone basically flipped the order of the digits, eg from 17k to 71k Ukrainian KiA. This is easily confirmed by the Russian aircraft losses; Oryx has many more visually confirmed losses than the edited number claims, and by its very nature Oryx's list is an underestimate.

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/1644139100407054336?cxt...

Thanks for the link, had not realized there was more than one version out there. My numbers definitely appear to be tampered with (judging from the alignment).

How can you even tell what actual info was leaked? How can you tell if the info leaked in real?

We have entered into a era where the difference between real and fake is almost impossible to distinguish. Deep fakes and LLM's are going to change propoganda forever.

In an article about leaked documents, they sure don't talk alot about the documents that were leaked...

Is it some kind of psych-op, LLM going on in the comments? No one's interested or curious about the documents and are spamming the page with 4chan shit?

I think the accusation that 4chan is a far-right message board is accurate, and I believe that accusation can be supported by showing that 4chan's explicitly stated rules can be used to plausibly deny this accusation, while demonstrating that they're are not enforced (or selectively enforced).

4chan's Rule 3: "You will not post any of the following outside of /b/: Troll posts, Racism, Anthropomorphic ("furry") pornography, Grotesque ("guro") images..."

These rules are constantly being violated across many of the boards, and moderators rarely take action on some of the boards when posts are reported unless they explicitly violate US law. I've seen so many threads get to 400+ replies and fall off the boards, threads that blatantly violate these rules. The period of time after the 2020 election was brutal, an enormous amount of violent and racist content was not removed.

Rules are often even selectively enforced, sculpting narratives that moderator cliques decide on (see /pol/ for example).

At some point, it's worthwhile to ask "who benefits?" from these rules not being enforced. The kind of content that doesn't get moderated is strictly far-right stuff.

Anthropomorphic furry porn is right wing now? I think there are some people for whom "offensive to me," "offensive to others, and "right wing" are equivalent terms. All your post does is prove that you fall into that category. Live Leak death videos and racist jokes are no more "right wing" than pedophilia is "left wing" (which is to say that it isn't).

Now some people break down racism in some weird way where bigotry towards Africans or Hispanics is "right wing" and bigotry toward Caucasians and Asians is "left wing," but those people are laughable in their tribalistic thinking and weird politicization of everything.

Have you even been on 4chan before? This isn't some nuanced "what actually is systemic bigotry?" question. "Ni**s and tra**s should all be burned alive and there should be bounties that pay for it" is not a subtle message. Yet it is a sentiment that is visible (and often verbatim) in every thread, and which receives supportive replies.

There are people of all political persuasions on 4chan. You're free to go on there and deride any white nationalists you see. No one will ban you.

> You're free to go on there and deride any white nationalists you see

Yes but you can do this anywhere. There are a limited number of places where you can openly be a white nationalist without being banned, 4chan is one of them.

You can also be a communist. You can also be an open source maximalist. You can also be a gay dog furry. You can also be trans. You can also be extremely autistic.

It is good to have a place where people can exist as themselves and be exposed to different ideas. I would wager that most people who go there are far more accepting than the general population.

What is it that you feel like you gain from being exposed to white nationalism?

Being unfazed by horrors isn't a virtue, having scarred your soul like this isn't something to be proud of. You should be uncomfortable talking to a nazi! You should be more than uncomfortable!

Someone might say the same thing about trans people. Should I be extremely uncomfortable talking to a trans person? Of course not. Many people think I should though.

As for white nationalists, when engaging in discussion with someone you disagree with you have the opportunity to change their mind.

We're all human. We won't always agree. I'm happy to meet everybody as human beings.

You don't have the opportunity to change their mind that's an illusion that works in their favor:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

When you do stuff like this all you are doing is giving them a platform, letting them do PR for their hideous causes. They can calmly discuss the very existence of a group of people and then exit when it suits them. A member of that group is, rightfully, unlikely to have that sort of calm intellectual distance from a conversation about their right to exist.

>But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly

You don't have to watch your words on 4chan though. You can literally just make fun of them.

You can larp as whoever you want to get a rise out of whoever you want. That is mostly what the site is. While you're larping as a nazi you're being exposed to every other political point of view, every gender, every race, and every sexuality.

How many real nazis do you think are comfortable looking at femboy threads all day? Is that really their choice forum? Hate speech and anthropomorphic dogs?

Yeah, a bunch of them are. They’re lunatics

> How many real nazis do you think are comfortable looking at femboy threads all day? Is that really their choice forum? Hate speech and anthropomorphic dogs?

a lot of them. Nazis in dog costumes are an actual population on the board and get into frequent conflicts with non nazi pornographic content consumers. You just need to check out the 18+ boards and you see it almost immediately.

For context, if I'm not mistaken you're quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew

Discarding people rather than their views and arguments is what creates extremists. When you see people as members of a group rather than individuals then you push them towards the extremists of that group.

Edgelords that argue for sport exist of course but they too are people - and might not even believe in whatever ideologies they are meming.

Being racist and being trans are not equivalent...

Who said they were?

The person I replied to did.

Negatory captain, I did not.

You were arguing against an argument by popularity or something like that, but giraffe lady didn't say that you should be uncomfortable talking to nazis because they're near universally reviled? But because they are reprehensible, not due to how they're considered.

I think isolating white nationalists just makes them congregate on echo chambers more. There should be a balance; you should not talk to racists/people with evil views if you can't maintain boundaries with them. So I don't disagree that you should be uncomfortable

Maybe you didn't mean to but your comment did indeed equate the two.

You didn't say it outright. But your words definitely contained a strong degree of innuendo that two groups were, in terms of potential for being intrinsically repulsive to others -- basically equivalent.

I disagree. The only equivalence drawn is that there are people who try to tell me how I should feel about each of those groups.

I do not feel that way though.

> Someone might say the same thing about trans people.

Sure, they might, but it'd be ridiculous.

Being a white nationalist is a choice someone makes (and continues to make every day) whereas being trans is not.

Further, white nationalism is associated with bigoted actions (including speech) whereas trans is just someone's personal identity that doesn't really affect anyone else. The two aren't remotely comparable.

I don't agree with white nationalism but I don't believe it is a choice someone makes. For the most part, you can't choose to believe something or not. Sure, you can choose to not engage in the actions and speech characteristic of white nationalists, but so can trans people stay closeted.

> For the most part, you can't choose to believe something or not.

To what extent beliefs are voluntary or involuntary is a major topic of philosophical dispute: https://iep.utm.edu/doxastic-voluntarism/

I'm happy to meet everybody as human beings.

No fucking way I am. Reading the above, it seems you lack awareness of how messed up and dangerous certain people out there are.

This feels all fine and good until those humans advocate for your extermination to other humans who are more prone to violence than them

And you should be uncomfortable talking to someone who is indifferent about supporting industrialized animal torture that is also destroying the climate, just because animals are "lesser" or "created by God for us to eat". But that's like, whatever, not the reprehensible evil in fashion.

Unrelated to this topic, but I don't see a logical way around this.

I guess I shouldn't talk to anyone. Almost unironically. Or should disengage from people who push into my boundaries, who would turn me into a worse person. So any white supremacist who keeps trying to "convince" me would be substantially worse than a meat eater who respects my views and doesn't push.

It's ok to be a communist, it's ok to use open source software, it's ok to be gay, a furry, trans, or autistic.

It's not ok to be a white nationalist. /b/ and other 4chan boards do not ban white nationalists.

>It's ok to be a communist

Only if you ignore the mountain of skulls

No, it is NOT ok to be a communist. Communists and white nationalists are morally equivalent, though communism to date has a much higher body count than white nationalism and their methods of execution and torture have on balance been more savage and more brutal.

We stopped white Nationalisms. If not, Communism's death toll would be a joke in comparison.

This post really illustrates the expansion of terms into meaninglessness. One presumes they're referring to the Allies (who themselves would now be considered extremely racist) stopping the Nazis, who allied with the Japanese and were targeting/killing mostly Jewish and Slavic peoples. The Nazis were specifically pro-German/Aryan and whatever they thought that meant ethnically. They did not see things in today's racial terms. It's absurd to describe them as "white nationalists" because they didn't think that being "white" was good. There were a lot of "bad" "white" people in their worldview.

It also seems unlikely that the Nazis would have succeeded in killing many more millions of people than they did without Allied intervention, but at least this requires some unprovable speculation about alternative histories. Either way, can we stop fighting battles almost a century old? Today's bad guys are not yesterday's and yesterday's good guys are not today's good guys.

Unprobable speculation? Ever heard of the final solution? FFS...

I would strongly recommend reading The Third Reich trilogy by Richard J. Evans. Most people have a rather propagandistic view of the war and this series is easily accessible for the layman and does a really good job at laying out what happened and when and why.

Can you provide a summary for people who don't want to read 3 books?

this is a baffling comment! white nationalists still very often hate jewish people! they are not dramatically different and still have a tendency to idolize nazis!

The communist body count is largely based on incapacity that led to famine.

The white nationalist made genocide an efficient industrial process. Just look how little time they needed to nearly eradicate the Jews.

Holodomor wasn't an accident, neither where the killing fields. Please stop spreading communist propaganda.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Holodomor

Well, by this logic it's way less ok to be capitalist and imperialist

on that grounds it’s also not ok to be a capitalist… maybe I’m not familiar enough with communism but I didn’t think it inherently included genocide like white nationalism tends to?

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

A money quote for those who can't be bothered to read: Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population.

And people still want to be communists. Ideology is strange.

Is that not due to the specific regime regardless of the political ideology? Communism doesn't inherently include brutal totalitarian autocrats? we've certainly seen them under other systems as well.

> Communism doesn't inherently include brutal totalitarian autocrats?

It's a "smoking causes cancer" situation. Just because other things also cause cancer doesn't mean that smoking doesn't. Read up on the history, look at each communist country, see what they become. Smoking causes cancer.

There's just still a bunch of communists who deny it because it's uncomfortable. Just like Neo-Nazis are denying the holocaust. If they were proud of it, they wouldn't deny it. They're not, but they'd like to keep the rest of their worldview intact and pretend that it didn't happen. Don't be like that, look at the history.

Fair enough, I can agree that communism has a bad track record. Though if I were to go back to my original point there's certainly an inherent violence in white nationalism that is unacceptable and being tolerant of this is paradoxical.

There are countries that while not communist, successfully enact a blend of socialism and capitalism without any significant violence. I don't think white nationalism has any sort of validly applicable aspects that can be stretched to that effect.

> Though if I were to go back to my original point there's certainly an inherent violence in white nationalism that is unacceptable and being tolerant of this is paradoxical.

I don't think it does any more than any other form of nationalism does. Are the Baltic countries violent in your eyes? Their nationalism necessarily is hard to distinguish from ethnic nationalism, because they're very homogeneous. All they'd need to do to be white nationalists is to declare so openly. They're a pretty peaceful bunch, unless you invade them (like the Soviets found out in the Winter War).

Communism on the other hand, is necessarily violent, it cannot function without violently suppressing those who do not believe in it, and it will, always and without fail, go on an eradication trip to do so.

I think there's a notable difference though, the baltic states may be ethnic nationalists... but they're established nations. And sure, while they could claim to be white nationalists... they do not seem to want to make that association.

White nationalism universally seeks to carve out its own space at the expense of others. It's impossible to engage with the ideology without associating with violence.

It's definitely not OK to a be communist. One of the most hurtful ideologies out there. Proven again and again. It's definitely not OK to be a fascist or an islamist either.

For what it's worth, you can openly be a white nationalist (or black nationalist, or any other kind of racial nationalist) on most social media, even here on Hacker News.

However, you will be moderated if you say anything extremely violent/racist on most social media sites. That's a good thing, in my opinion. I can understand if someone doesn't think it's a good thing that that content is moderated.

I'd take the argument that 4chan isn't a site for the far-right more seriously if 4chan didn't have these explicit rules which they don't enforce (or selectively enforce). But it's pretty clear what kind of rules are allowed to be broken on that site and what kind of rules aren't allowed to be broken. Take one glance at /pol/ for an example.

That's a weird way to frame a truly free speech environment. Yes, speech is more limited to left-leaning speech on most accepted parts of the internet. That doesn't make a board that allows both to be right-leaning. It means that most of the internet is left-leaning.

Ofc, im simplifying to left vs right here, but that's only in response to calling it a right leaning board.

Many people confuse "free speech is a good" with "free speech is the highest good".

> truly free speech environment

Sounds awful.

You should rest easy tonight, knowing that nobody has any plans to make you go there.

If only its toxic effects didn't spill over into the real world, corroding hard-won civilized society.

Right without 4chan “spilling over into the “”real”” world” we’d have a utopia with zero hate.

If your civilization can be toppled by some weeaboos on a Mongolian basket weaving forum, maybe it wasn't that great to begin with.

Truly free speech has a vibe of calling Vogelfrei truly freedom.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogelfrei

Are doxing, slander, defamation free speech?

Truly free, as in no limitation. I would include doxing, slander, and defamation to fall under "truly free speech", yes. That it not me advocating for these things, it is me calling limiting them what it is: limiting speech. We limit them because they can be very dangerous or destructive, not because they aren't speech.

> It means that most of the internet is left-leaning.

At the risk of sounding like I wear a tin foil hat... that's what they want you to think!

> Yes but you can do this anywhere

I disagree. Most websites don't allow white nationalism, so there aren't any white nationalists to bully. On websites like Facebook or reddit, you're either screaming into the void or preaching to the choir.

Yeah you can argue that /pol/ sways far right and you'd be correct, and I don't personally condone most of the opinions that are represented there, but take a look at the general threads, you have a pro-ukraine one and an anti-ukraine one, both with equal representation. I can't think of any other site that has this. Any other website following the classical formula of pseudonyms and upvotes/downvotes, like Reddit, hackernews, and so on, are destined to be an echo chamber. You can feel it here too, even though HN is heavily moderated.

And say what you want about 4chan, but the most popular open source machine learning frontends come from /g/, that is, Automatic1111's stable diffusion, ComfyUI from Comfyanomyous, and oobabooga text-generation-ui for running LLMs locally. It's a place which is hostile to the lowest common denominator of the internet, which functions as a great filter for better or worse.

If you want a comfortable safe space that shields you from being offended, the popular social networks are great for you, but if you have thick skin and can handle unfiltered conversation, there is nothing more visceral and organic than 4chan, despite all its warts.

Surely at this point half the content on /pol/ is from professional propagandists and LLM-powered bots, trying to create the impression of a "4chan consensus" to sway anyone stupid enough to be taken in by that.

Why would professional propagandists care to influence a mongolian basket weaving forum? Even if they do succeed, their audience is going to be largely social outcasts with very little power or influence in society.

Respectfully, meme magic says otherwise

Laughing to myself imagining the people believing you, thinking “hmm methinks I could use a little intellectual diversity in my bubble”, they click over to 4chan, take a big sip of coffee, and… actually look at it. lol

e: I’ll concede you can find different opinions there. Just, I wanna see a video feed of an unsuspecting person actually trying to go there to, like, learn.

>e: I’ll concede you can find different opinions there. Just, I wanna see a video feed of an unsuspecting person actually trying to go there to, like, learn.

Learning about opposing viewpoints doesn't count as learning?

Imagine I said whatever you wanted me to say to that and have fun with it, man. You deserve it.

There's an adjustment period to understand each boards specific signal:noise. You can't just walk in and find Aristotle and Kant figuring shit out.

Each board has its ridiculous bullshit, groupthink, absurd extremists, edgelords, etc. once you know how to parse that you can quickly navigate to quality posts.

Each board of course has different signal:noise though, somewhere like /lit/ is probably 1:20 whereas /pol/ is probably 1:500-1/1000. But the quality posts are totally different from what you'll find anywhere else. Different users and audience.

Also elevenlabs ai started as an offshoot of the MLP voice generation threads.

Take a look at the general threads, you have a pro-ukraine one and an anti-ukraine one, both with equal representation.

And this is ... a good thing?

yes

What, you prefer a bubble? Things were far better before the opposing viewpoints walled themselves off and refused to communicate with the people who disagreed with them. Isn't the political divide one of the big problems in (US) society these days?

What, you prefer a bubble?

False dichotomy.

Just because I don't like the same radio station you like - doesn't mean I want to live in a bubble, and only listen to my own music.

When 50% of the population likes that radio station, then yeah it means you want to live in a bubble.

So if 50 percent of the town I live in watches Fox News, and I don't -- I'm living in a bubble?

If Fox News is different enough from the news you watch, then yes, obviously.

My take is a source is "bubbly" or not on the basis of its content.

Not the portion of people in your immediate vicinity who happen to read/listen to it.

This doesn't make a site right-wing.

I don't think it's good, that's why I don't go there. But the discussion was never whether it was good.

> Yeah you can argue that /pol/ sways far right and you'd be correct, and I don't personally condone most of the opinions that are represented there, but take a look at the general threads, you have a pro-ukraine one and an anti-ukraine one, both with equal representation. I can't think of any other site that has this.

It's not so much the voting that makes things lopsided but when posts are ordered or deemphasized based on those votes or if the actual moderators are opposed to free speech ideals. I can think of at least two low-moderation forums that do manage to host people of opposing opinions for the Ukraine war and other topics so it's not like 4chan is particularly unnique, just bigger and better known.

The rules not being enforced really is 4chan's worst problems, and where everything else terrible on that site stems. On /g/, the tech board, you will see nothing but flame wars and troll posts for/against various operating systems and programming languages. Its basically nonstop trolling DESPITE being one of the more serious boards. Worse, a lot of the "jannies"(unpaid tattletales) are in on the trolling and actively make posts to start flame wars.

For the admins, its a problem. Besides 8kun, they are pretty much the only major image board with anything really going for it, especially now that 420chan has bit the dust. However, if they enforce the rules, its very likely that people will either stop using it entirely or move on to 8kun instead. For the janitor problem, 4chan relies almost entirely on them to report posts that break the rules to the admins, but since its on a volunteer basis, janitors have no reason to take the role seriously which has led the site to be the gutter it is now.

Basically, the whole 4chan system is screwed. I used to go to 420chan as an alternative because it was way more "chill" and there was way less racism and trolling due to it having actual moderation. Now that its gone though my only choice for imageboards are 4chan and its much worse brother, 8kun so I have decided to stop using imageboards entirely until something decent gets started.

>... which has led the site to be the gutter it is now.

... now? It's felt like a cesspool for decades.

> decades

4chan hasn't...

Oh god, 4chan has been around for almost 20 years. I'm getting old...

Yeah, I even went and double checked just to make sure. "That feels right, but it can't be-... ah fuck."

Well, it was a cesspool back then, I guess it's good to hear it's still a cesspool now.

The more things change, I suppose.

20 years this October. Weird stuff

It’s interesting that the website is considered far-right simply because it doesn’t ban far-right posters. The website isn’t explicitly for right-wingers, but by allowing them to post on the website that’s what it’s become.

More specifically, it allows far righters to post against its rules, but enforces them against other groups. It's hardly surprising then.

> More specifically, it allows far righters to post against its rules, but enforces them against other groups.

Source of this happening systemically? I ask systemically because for any forum there's accusations (and corresponding anecdotes) of censorship from both sides, so a few posts don't really prove anything. You see this on twitter for instance, with accusations that both the left and the right are being unfairly targeted.

1. Read the sitewide 4chan rules.

2. Look at /pol/.

3. Break another of the rules. (ie not the racism rule).

4. see your post get deleted.

How does this answer my original question? Are you just suggesting that because there is racism on /pol/, that it means that rules are being selectively enforced against non-"far righters"?

Yes. The far right is specifically being exempted from certain rules, while other rules are exempted. You can observe this because the far right is exempted from the rule that's meant to restrict them to /b/ and is instead allowed to roam free across the website (not just /pol/), while others aren't.

>Yes. The far right is specifically being exempted from certain rules, while other rules are exempted.

which specific rules are you talking about, aside from racism? Or is your claim simply that rules against racism isn't being enforced and therefore that constitutes "but enforces them against other groups"? Note that the latter is slightly different than the former. The former simply implies a rule that is written but not enforced, but the latter implies that certain rules (eg. "be polite") are being selectively used against a particular group (eg. impolite far-right posters are not punished, but impolite far-left posters are punished).

It's the Nazi Bar problem.

https://twitter.com/IamRageSparkle/status/128089253502461952...

You are linking to a website that now allows far-right posters, not sure if Nazis are included. Did it become a Nazi bar? I don't think so.

From the outside, it sure as shit looks like it. Great that you don't think so, good to know you're oblivious.

This is literally slippery slop fallacy? . Are we dropping that one from the rulebook?

Sometimes slopes are slippery.

I think it's far-right representation has certainly grown over time, probably largely as a function of right-wing speech being pushed out of other platforms.

However 4chan has always had, and continues to have quite broad demographics, it attracts extremes, by nature of it's low moderation and permissive content policies.

Some examples of left wing associated content could be it's very active LGBT user base.

It's involvement political movements like "anonymous", targeting groups like the Westboro baptist church, hacking the website of Uganda's anti-gay prime minister, occupy wall street, etc.

Grown or concentrated? I can assure you they've always been on Facebook and Twitter, if you didn't see them you were probably bubbled by the algorithm. After the 2016 election a lot of the more mainstream sites decided they didn't want to host them anymore, it's kinda a no-brainer that they'd go to places like 4chan that won't kick them off

LGBT is not inherently left wing. I’m not sure why you would think it is.

Anti-semitism also isn't inherently right wing. That doesn't mean the social phenomenon currently driving anti-semitism isn't right wing.

The 4chan moderators are rarely enforcing the rules against racism, like anti-semitism, on the extreme boards, and sometimes they don't enforce those rules on non-extreme boards too. The anti-semitism on the extreme boards is rampant. It's pretty clear that the far-right is the current social phenomenon that is driving modern racism and anti-semitism, at least in the West.

> That doesn't mean the social phenomenon currently driving anti-semitism isn't right wing.

> It's pretty clear that the far-right is the current social phenomenon that is driving modern racism and anti-semitism, at least in the West.

That really depends on who you ask. There are many Jews who insist that left-wing antisemitism is a big problem-some will even argue it is as big a problem as (or even a bigger problem than) right-wing antisemitism. And it isn’t just right-wing Jews who speak of left-wing antisemitism as a big and growing problem - the ADL, which is very much a respected part of the American Jewish establishment, is saying the same thing - https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/09/06/adl-ceo-left-wing-anti...

Not inherently, but close enough, mostly just because the right seems to hate it.

I’m well aware of the limitations with the left-right political abstraction. Every individual issue has varying levels of support among traditional political groupings, but I think it’s fair to say that issue of advancing the interests of LGBT people, is overwhelmingly an issue associated with a left wing political disposition.

> but I think it’s fair to say that issue of advancing the interests of LGBT people, is overwhelmingly an issue associated with a left wing political disposition.

Some truth in that, in Western countries right now, but less so historically or globally. Stalin re-criminalised homosexuality in 1934, and in Russia even today you can find far-left people whose views on LGBT issues are largely indistinguishable from those of the far-right. I’m sure some are going to argue those people “aren’t really left”-but unapologetic Stalinists really are far-left not far-right, and the anti-LGBT stuff is just their following in Stalin’s own footsteps. There are heaps of Western right-wingers who are far more LGBT-friendly than the average Russian Stalinist

Given the context, besides the other responses you've been given, I would add pink triangles.

>Rules are often even selectively enforced, sculpting narratives that moderator cliques decide on (see /pol/ for example).

I can tell you for a fact that the large majority of the mods despise /pol/. As for rules not being enforced, if a post is not reported it likely won't be acted upon.

I've reported 1000+ non-illegal posts for breaking the rules, at minimum, with very low (<5%) action/moderation rate on the extreme boards.

always weird to read someones made up opinion of an online space. the documentary about pepe was the same

The NYT characterizes 4chan as a far-right message board, which is ridiculous.

I mean, if giving the finger to pretty much everything is considered far-right, then what's considered far-left? Fundamentalism?

It's 2023. The site has been around for 19 years. If they haven't gotten it right by this point, they never will. And its "probably" that way by design.

> then what's considered far-left

4chan. The most notorious boards feel anarchist and were very anti-globalist long before it was fashionable.

But as you implied, 4chan as a whole is not homogenous.

Anarchism and anti-globalism were far-left values like 20 years ago. Right now the left and far-left give strong "conform" vibes.

I dunno about that. Radical anti capitalist sentiment, for instance, feels far left and anarchist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_anarchism

That really depends on the reasoning behind it.

The far right has a number of anti-capitalist. Usually around capitalism undermining social order and traditional bonds.

If we're talking 4chan specifically still, then the idea that capitalism is a jewish plot to... something? (the what varies a lot as far as I can tell) is probably more likely.

There is a substantial cohort of 'libs' who started calling themselves 'leftists' post-George Floyd, but when probed about their opinions on e.g. means testing, prison abolition, or asked to define even something as basic as Marxism, miss the mark so widely on the fundaments of those ideas that it appears they've labeled themselves without actually contending with certain core concepts that literally define the distinctions between left folks and others.

Of course, the boogeymen borne of tribalistic (politico-cultural) battlegrounds mean that those on the broad right look leftward and see people calling themselves 'leftists' dragging the classical left tenets toward strange, centrist-ized, often authoritarian lines and assume without further evidence that this applies to the left generally.

I promise you there's still plenty of folks who competently understand the labels they choose to inhabit.

Both “anarchism” and “anti-globalism” (the former largely as a result of fairly recent cooption, the latter inherently in being a label of opposition not specifically tied to the ideological reason for opposition) have both far-left and far-right versions, and that remains the case. Neither is universal on the left or the right, either, because while anarchism in the narrower historical sense is connected to socialism, there are obviously socialisms that are not anarchist (even without going to the extreme of Lenin/Stalin/Mao vanguardist approaches).

I disagree that, within the left and far-left, the anarchist or anti-globalist segments have recently retreated. OTOH, in the United States, the old (peaking around 1990) overlapping center-right neoliberal globalist faction forming the moderate wings of both major parties has faded in the Republican Party, leading the remaining segment of it – which is the dominant faction of the Democratic Party – to be called “left” (and sometimes “far left”) by Republican partisans.

The board specifically set aside for politics on 4chan is probably the most popular neo-Nazi discussion forum on the internet. "Far-right" is a completely fair description of the political leanings of that site.

But they have never been "far right" in the way that the traditional racial supremacy kind of neo nazis are.

If anything, they are good evidence for horseshoe theory, or perhaps invalidity of the left-right scale: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

/pol/ most certainly is that way. I've been on 4chan for more than 15 years and I research far right extremism professionally. /pol/ isn't the most right wing or extreme place on the internet, but claiming it's not like 'traditional racial supremacy [..] neo-nazis' is nonsense, that's 20-25% of /pol/ threads.

Touche, I am not a /pol/ regular. Glimpses of /b/ is about as far as I got, and the Nazism seemed more like trolling and baiting on the surface.

> I research far right extremism professionally

Please elaborate. This is a common claim among "disinformation experts," when what they really mean is they occasionally browse /pol/ while telling themselves it's an academic exercise and they're obviously better than everyone posting on that "cesspool."

If reading /pol/ for hours a day is enough to say you "research far right extremism professionally," then I'd posit that every one of the most active users of /pol/ is more of an expert on it than any pseudo-intellectual making a spurious claim to authority based on their "professional expertise." By that metric, nearly every one of your "research subjects" is more of an expert than you, so if we want a fair assessment of 4chan, we should probably ask someone who uses it genuinely rather than sanctimoniously.

This comment is written in bad faith - generally on HN we try to take what people say at face value. They said they research far-right extremism professionally. The good-faith interpretation is that they do this as part of their job, as that is what "professionally" means.

I'm skeptical that any such job exists.

> I'm skeptical that any such job exists.

The University of Oslo has a "Center for Research on Extremism" (CRE-X). https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/

While their name suggests they might be just as interested in the far-left as the far-right, if you look at their actual publications, they are almost entirely focused on the far-right, and even those rare occasions they do pay any attention to the far-left, it is generally cases of far-right/far-left overlap. So yes, they are an example of people researching far-right extremism for a living.

In fact, there are lots of other university and independent research centres looking into the topic–I cited CRE-X as an example only because they were at the top of my Google search results. It is something government research funders in many countries want to invest in, and there are also various wealthy philanthropists and charity/activist/lobby groups willing to put money towards it. Nothing unbelievable about someone claiming to do it professionally, because people do.

Realistically, there is reason for an institution in Norway to study far-right extremism, as it can and has happened there. e.g. Utøya in 2011

> The University of Oslo has a "Center for Research on Extremism" (CRE-X)

> I cited CRE-X as an example only because they were at the top of my Google search results

C-REX, not CRE-X. And I didn’t just mangle their acronym once, I managed to do it twice

Lots of people work in this space. How do you expect anyone to write or teach about such a topic without performing research? Keeping an eye on 4chan/pol/ is the least interesting part of my work, because while it's the largest community of its type it functions mainly as an amplifier/dumping ground rather than a source of much original content. /g/ is a much more enjoyable community to participate in.

I was a chan user long before I took up this work full time. I didn't say I was a 'disinformation expert', I mostly study mass shooters, would-be terrorists, and violent street groups.

>But they have never been "far right" in the way that the traditional racial supremacy kind of neo nazis are.

There is no way you are talking about /pol/. I refuse to believe you have spent any amount of time on /pol/ and haven't seen the countless race IQ charts.

This is like saying reddit is far right because of the_donald

The_Donald was (1) banned and (2) not the official politics forum. It's more like characterizing Reddit as a whole as left-leaning because /r/politics is, which is, in my book, a fair claim.

Reddit's userbase seems to be mostly "brogressive". Imgur, surprisingly, seems more solidly "based".

I mean the goofiness comes from "what are the politics of a website" being inherently kind of a strange question with no clear answer. The motivations and values of the people who run these sites are mostly not legible to us. We can look at what the sites are used for.

If someone is using their own money to host a forum for neo nazis it's very coherent to describe this behavior as, at the very least, supporting neo nazis. If they are also hosting a motorcycle forum with their money, does that cancel out the neo nazi support? Is it reasonable to say either site IS a nazi forum?

What if most but not all members of the motorcycle forum are also nazi forum members? What if only a few of them are? What if they share login systems and comment histories?

There aren't clear boundaries between these things. The nazi forum is definitely a nazi forum. Whether the motorcycle forum is a nazi forum depends on how much userbase and culture and branding they share, and how high your tolerance for nazis is; an individual assessment without an objective answer.

We all know the FBI got their tentacles in Reddit’s policies.

O wait.

I thought Stormfront was the big website for them? /pol/ is a bunch of nutters but it's not well organized. Arguably there's more visible White Nationalism on Twitter.

/b/, /vg/, /v/, /pol/ and sometimes /g/ all have strong alt right representation. (actually /g/ is still much more libertarian but you get some bleed in here and there).

Even /sci/ has changed. You have race IQ intelligence threads all the time compared to 2011. Instead of the daily Putnam problem thread, you get that garbage.

NYT is pretty on the money here.

If this were 2010, I'd disagree with them, but not nowadays.

disclaimer of my own bias: I stopped using 4chan in 2012 because of how much of an alt right mess it became after /r9k/. Didn't have the words to describe it back then. I remember people making endless Dragon Age memes in the pinned thread in /v/ in response to the mass shooting by a particular Anders in 2011. They were celebrating it, and it was the most active live thread on the site in that moment.

Please define alt right, in your own words. It seems everyone claiming 4chan is right, far right, or alt right, means something rather different

I am not going to play games with semantics when we can look at the state of the site now compared to before 2011.

Do you think that /pol/ is anything but some bastardization of right wing principles?

Alt right is a progranda term by neo nazis for neo nazis, so they don't sound like actual neo nazis.

Stop using the term alt right. Alt right means neo nazi. Nothing else.

Not every racist is a neo nazi, not every leftist is a stalinist.

Lumping them together is a cheap tactic to aggravate people, which I think it's dishonest and not very effective.

> Not every racist is a neo nazi,

True, American racists are, for instance, quite often neoconfederates. OTOH, the Confederates were among the direct inspirations for the Nazis, so in a sense that makes those racists Neo-Proto-Nazis.

>Even /sci/ has changed. You have race IQ intelligence threads all the time compared to 2011. Instead of the daily Putnam problem thread, you get that garbage.

Is race IQ intelligence discussion really "garbage"? To my knowledge there isn't strong evidence confirming or disproving the theory, but the science on the genetic component of intelligence is pretty solid, and it isn't implausible that certain ethnic groups have genes that confer more intelligence, similar to how certain ethnic groups have genes that make them taller or better runners (see for instance, the olympic winners for sprints).

regardless of whether or not you think the topic is a worthy intellectual pursuit (i do not), the frequency at which it is discussed implies a racist agenda

And what's the frequency that doesn't imply "a racist agenda"? I went on skimmed all the OPs and found a few threads about intelligence/IQ, but couldn't find one with a racist bent.

Most of these race/iq threads end up concluding that East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are the most intelligent racial groups, not exactly the poster children of white nationalism.

That doesn't mean shit. These conclusions nowadays on 4chan are usually used to affirm their belief of an extremely racist "Goldilocks" theory.

- East Asians and Jews are intelligent but lack creative thought and individualism (the terms hivemind and "bugmen" will often pop up here).

- I don't need to explain what they think about Black People.

- But White People are juuuuuust right

there is also the narrative that these tests are designed by secret groups (ran by whom you ask?) to have such stack ranking to keep white people down and not realizing their true potential. i don't know how anyone sees racial IQ discussion and not realize it is always going to devolve into nazis.

My guess is (since I don't claim to be a 4chan expert), in the beginning, 4chan users were just being edgy by being trolls and being for the choices that would lead to chaos (by being not politically correct, by supporting Donald Trump), but this attracted many genuine right-wingers, and if they do bother to hang out there, that would mean 4chan has become a far-right message board.

The uptick in unironic racism mostly happened when stormfront discovered 4chan.

I mean, giving the finger to everything is a pretty common trope amongst the far right.

Everyone has their uncle or cousin that says "I am not racist I just hate everyone equally"...

It's also a GOP playbook to destroy or disrupt social services and education to then say "look how bad everything is"...

Saying 4chan isn't a far-right message board is like saying HN isn't a tech forum, and citing the existence of non-tech threads to support that argument.

The Something Awful forums are probably the most virulently far left "major" online space at present.

They mostly keep the communism will win white genocide now stuff behind the paywall though.

Is Discord PR active in this thread? TFA centers on that platform, with 4chan being mentioned only a handful of times, yet this thread so far is completely focused on 4chan.

I think more likely there are just a lot of 4chan users on this site. And some subset of those take perceived attacks like these quite personally.

I was joking- I think it's just HN being really good at jumping down the wrong rabbit holes and bike-shedding ad nauseam, while completely missing the point of an OP.

>Is Discord PR active in this thread?

...

>I was joking

This might be a good opportunity to read up again on Poe's law[0]. It pretty much always applies when one tries to make jokes like this on the web.

Sarcasm and irony only work as intended when talking with people who know you personally or with people who assume they know your viewpoints. If people don't have reason to believe they know your viewpoint, they hear your sarcasm as literal (and frequently think poorly of you, as a result).

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Poe's law is hot garbage though. If someone misses context because they're not privy to sarcasm, that isn't automatically the speaker's fault.

Sarcasm doesn’t work with text based medium.

Is this sarcasm?

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