Comment by fastglass | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fastglass | Hacker News Reader

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I feel too many people who don't conflate /pol/ with the whole website, as well as the others, don't know why /pol/ was created.

It was eventually a replacement for the /new/ board, where news of the arab spring first started, shortly before it was shut down. However, it was plagued with proto-pol behavior before anyone was bothering to complain about pol.

There was always these 'cells' of non /jp/ shitposters, if they weren't the OG shitposters themselves, that would post about left-right politics ad nauseum, and in the most hallmark unproductive ways. It was when trolling evolved from 'clever this and that' to shear brute forcing. It was the topic of the news that attracted these unsavor political actors into that place, which was for a short period of time, a great diverse place for collecting news.

This social phenomena and history could never be repeated enough, particularly since we might be finally ending the story of pol/4chan - which was more popular than 4chan itself.

I feel too many people who conflate /pol/ with the whole website are just regurgitating information they heard from other social media sites. The most popular boards, by far, since 2020 have been the video game and vtuber boards. With Video Game generals being the most popular board for the past five years outside of the occasional political season. You can check this on 4stats.

People who still complain about /pol/ look a little like people who would still complain about ebaumsworld: Completely out of touch individuals who equate everything to a tiny phenomena.

sorry buddy, but it's the nazi bar analogy. Let one nazi into your bar the whole bar is a nazi bar.

I don't care if some other sub-board is all sunshines and happiness, it's a nazi forum because of all the nazis that are coddled there.

That’s a silly thing to think about any site on the internet. Have you vetted every person on any site you post on? Or even this thread? If not, how do you expect a moderator to do that? This isn’t a pub, it’s a site used by tens of thousands of people.

Yes but if you go on /pol/ for an hour you are guaranteed to see nazi shit. I don't think they were saying that one nazi on the board means it's a nazi board, I think that part scales up when mapping the analogy to real life.

I mean, you could say the same about reddit or instagram depending on which people or subjects you follow on those platforms. They may have more moderation and checks to user identity but the problem is the same. This is coming from someone who quit using it altogether because of the 2016 elections: Trying to judge an anonymous platform with zero entry-level checks on what slips through isn't logical when that same standard suddenly doesn't apply when one puts the same logic on billion dollar companies who have all the moderation in the world and still can't clean their platforms up.

I don't post on sites that cater to nazis, if a website starts catering to nazis I stop visiting it. It's incredibly easy

What does 4chan do to "cater to nazis" that Hacker News doesn't? They both exist as discussion platforms, one just has less overall moderation.

That's fine, but I hope you don't also use Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc. while you say that. Or maybe even this site if the comments at the very bottom of this page are to be believed.

Wow you must have a HARROWING life trying to use the internet with that attitude. Have you just never heard of social media before? The other sites have a history of extremist groups all across the world posting pictures of murders to their platform, and you're probably okay using those.

For most of the period from 2020 to 2023, /pol/ has had more posts/day than any other board, often substantially more and it was 2nd most of the time. The /vt/ is a pretty distant 4th behind /v/.

I'm not entirely certain that I would call /pol/, which generates upwards of 110K posts/day a tiny phenomenon. It's about 13% of all 4chan posts. Add in /b/ and it's about a fifth.

And of course, casual bigotry is all over 4chan, not just /pol/.

https://4stats.io/

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