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Comment by geriatric-janny | Hacker News Reader

My official association with 4chan ended in 2010, but I still recognise a good third of those names and would wager the leak is legit.

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My association was a bit later, mid to late 2010s. I recognize some of the names as well, including one of the top folks that probably onboarded both of us.

That said, my info is not on the list, I assume it was deleted when I left.

What kind of official association could one have with 4chan? 4chan was formative for my early connection to the internet, and I'm really curious what the organization behind it looked like. Was it professionally driven, or just some random guy mailing checks? stuff like that.

Well... A full dump of the board exclusive to moderators and janitors was leaked too so now you could take a look yourself.

I lied about my age and was given janitor access in the mid 2000s. There was a special /j/ board to coordinate on, but it broke relatively early, and you mostly had to hang out in the #janiteam channel on Rizon. I think almost everybody else was underage as well. There was a minimal web overlay that let you delete/escalate posts. You couldn't see people's IPs, but you could see how many outstanding ban requests they had. These numbers helped me deduce that many boards' most infamous personalities were all the same guy.

We were all offered the chance to become mods in 2010, but moot wanted to see our faces on a Skype call. I thought that was a step too far and just gradually stopped caring after that. Seems like I made the right choice.

On the whole it was barely held together technically and organisationally, mostly run by moot's personal friends, and fun all around. Things were far less serious then.

And the checks arrived on time every month: $0.00

Sounds about like what I would have expected as a (also underage) user at the time. The suspicion was always that most of the memorable joke chains were probably just one guy self-replying (I always suspected that was the case for the hunter2 meme specifically). It didn't really matter, it was funny anyway.

Thanks for taking the time to reply, and thanks for the fun back then :)

>And the checks arrived on time every month: $0.00

Unexpectedly poignant.

> These numbers helped me deduce that many boards' most infamous personalities were all the same guy.

Simultaneously one of the best and worst parts about the website was how much a single person could create influence. Some guy spamposting "30-year old boomer" memes eventually turned boomer and zoomer into mainstream terminology.

I remember a long time ago, a general that I would frequent attracted the attention of a lunatic who would frequently try to ruin threads by spam posting corrupted unloadable images until the bumpcap was reached. It made a successful thread with no incidents feel like a moment of success.

Milhouse is still not a meme.

That's true. But on the other hand, "Millhouse is not a meme" is in fact a meme.

I like how this was the origin of the "virgin/Chad memes". Some guy kept spamming a meme about the "virgin walk" to make people feel self-conscious, and then someone made a joke response called the "Chad stride". Years later, those two are inseparable in popular culture.

A literal thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Mods of any decently sized forum can point to very special users participating in intense sockpuppetry, flamewars, getting back after being banned 20 times, and so on. It's not specific to 4chan.

The nature of 4chan makes it more difficult to distinguish from just normal posting. There's not any kind of paper trail to look at and potentially ID the posters.

It's also somewhat expected on the site from a cultural standpoint? Having a recognizable posting pattern gives flavor to a system that is otherwise composed of completely interchangeable posters. Like /v/ has one guy that constantly makes threads that are designed to devolve as quickly as possible into posting images of anthropomorphic lizards. It's not much of a nuisance so much as it makes the place feel comprised of genuine people.

For those OOTL about that last part, a common meme/troll of the moderators/jannies is

“They do it for free”

People would post rule breaking content and say “clean it up janny”

He was a janitor. On the internet. He did it for free.

he does it for free

So you were able to find the leak? Because I see reports that it was hacked repeated as fact everywhere on Daily Mail-tier reliable news websites and Reddit posts, but they are all based on “rumors on social media go about that there was a leak” but I've not been able to find the actual leak searching for it. Obviously not many people want to link it but it's also weird that so many people claim to have so easily been able to find it when I cannot.

Finally, I was there and using it when the website went down and this did not resemble an actual hack but technical issues. First there were a couple of hours where the website was up but no posts went through for anyone except occasionally when a new threat was bumped, mirroring the normal pattern of downtime issues that sometimes occur and then it just went down completely. This doesn't really resemble how a hack plays out but looks more like technical issues to me.

Even now, going to the front page, it loads for me, except very slowly and incompletely. This does not resemble a hack but technical issues.

I would've taken you less time to find the 'sinister' content yourself than leave this sprawling reply

To your point:

It's more likely than not real, it contains configs for the entire site.

Well, so you say, but every single news website that I can find willing to say something on the matter is either The Daily Mail and similar things that also say they based their information on leaks on “social media rumors” or more reputable websites that also say it's a rumor that there's a leak. One would assume if it be so easily found and I'm so incompetent that these news websites could've found it themselves and come with more certain claims.

I left a clue in my original reply.

I'm not spoonfeeding any harder than that.

Lurk moar or GTFO

That's a bit sinisterly of you.

Needed this 4chan-esque snark; was almost getting withdrawal shakes.

If you're looking for a link to the results of illegal hacking, then I humbly suggest that aboveboard news sites are not the place to look.

I'm saying I searched and I couldn't find it but what I did find was many news websites that reported it but said they couldn't confirm these rumors themselves and said they were just that, rumors. I found threads about it on other anonymous textboards where people would have no compunction to post the links and yet they didn't. The news sites don't just say “We obviously won't post the links.” but “We couldn't confirm these rumors.”.

Edit: I finally found one news website willing to actually confirm it though. The Daily Dot claims to have accessed the leaked information and verified it for itself.

Click the HN headline, click the 1st external reference, click the 1st thread. The first post is the leaker speaking. Beware that website, the thread, and 4chan itself, are all, at best, in a legal grey area.

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