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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

Nobody actually knows. People have been banned for violations of the stated rules on each board despite not actually violating them, people have been left alone for flagrant violations of said rules. Board features like names, macros, and so on are toggled on and off more or less on a whim.

To say that 4chan's enforcement is inconsistent would be an understatement. But, the chaos is a feature, not a bug. Something to keep in mind.

But for everyone else, this is one of the reasons I think seriously that 8chan is the next big thing, it's basically Reddit, but for image boards. Mod abuse (real or perceived) will result in community fragmentation but on the same site, rather than exodus to other sites.

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>it's basically Reddit, but for image boards

I think reddit has shown us quite conclusively that the "create-your-own-niche" paradigm simply leads to a series of over-specialized echo chambers with perpetually rising levels of groupthink and self-reinforcing, self-congratulatory posting. In other words I think reddit's architecture amplifies shitposting rather than mitigating it.

How dare people share content with other like-minded people!

You missed the point by an impressive margin.

Did I

I don't think Reddit's shown us anything of the sort, really. I expect people have a habit of reading too much into this kind of thing.

Look, when everyone gets to be king of their own sandcastle, you obviously end up with a larger number of smaller castles. But the not-so-obvious consequence is that because people implicitly know they can just start making their own sand castle, it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever, and they're sick of seeing $content_type in what they've come to see as their personal newsfeed.

IMHO the "benevolent dictator" style works better. People on 4chan complain, sure, largely as a consequence of no upvotes and complete anonymity from other users. But they also mostly just "make it work" when it comes to classifying content. On the tech board /g/, there's a surprisingly diverse stream of content that makes its way through. Because there's only one /g/ it all fits into one melting pot and the community is more vibrant and diverse as a result.

I think the same happens here on HN. A lot of different people with different tastes frequent this site. If it was simply "news for startup founders" or "javascript framework news" it would be a lot less interesting.

> it foments divisiveness because all of a sudden everyone "knows" they can do a better job moderating/curating/whatever

That is a legitimate force, but it's canceled out by the fact that when you create your own sandcastle, no one comes to to visit it.

You can start your own subreddit, but it will be dead until you build an actual community there and that takes a ton of effort. In the meantime, it provides you no value—all the links on it are ones you yourself added, there's no discussion, etc.

People on 4chan don't just complain, entire board subcultures have completely vanished along with the people in them. For example, /u/ used to be the unofficial lesbian advice and discussion board, and there was an entire community there co-existing happily with the porn posters and seekers. Got wiped out overnight by a new mod who decided the board should be solely for yuri porn, pissing off everyone in the process - and now the /u/ culture of that time is dead, with no record it ever even existed. (moot added a proper board for LGBT discussions a few years later for unrelated reasons.)

> Got wiped out overnight by a new mod

It is (was) moot's website. Other people aren't the ones who set the rules.

Since the design of the site has official topics for each board, you do have to set limits on what's relevant and make new boards when something new comes up. And it's not always possible to make new boards if you don't have mods for them.

In this case, mixing 2D and 3D can be dangerous. It's also a little unfair in that the yaoi board wouldn't be usable for the same thing.

I think the difference between Reddit and 8chan, the difference, is the lack of a voting system. Consider that Reddit, after any post has three more downvotes than upvotes (score of -2), by default, that post will be hidden. Most Reddit users browse not logged in (according to their own stats), and of those that are, most have this "threshold" option still turned on, and it leads to more echo chambering since views that are unpopular will simply go unseen. Another plague is that people will go through your comment history and attempt to use that to discredit you.

On any *chan style imageboard, this isn't a thing. You can hide posts that you don't like, but by design, all posts are equal. If someone posts something you don't like, your options are to ignore it or respond to it, but it's there, in the open, for all to see.

This, I think, is the better system, combined with the default anonymous posting style of these boards that completely ensures that any post is judged on its merits, rather than the identity of its poster. That's not say that board culture doesn't exist, it does, but it exists purely socially, rather than being a feature of the software. The things I've seen happening on YouTube and G+ and Facebook have convinced me that existence of a coherent identity has zero impact on people's behavior.

>Another plague is that people will go through your comment history and attempt to use that to discredit you.

I don't know that accountability is a bad thing. If you're so ashamed of what you're saying that you don't want people bringing it up later, don't say it. Or use an alt.

This can balance out the fact that it's an anonymous anything-goes site. Yes, people can say pretty much whatever they want but if they know they will get shamed for it later, it might prevent them sharing the worst stuff.

I'd say that is hardly the case, there are plenty of specialized boards that allow folks with similar interest and passions to pursue those in ways that may not be possible outside of a specialized community. I'm sure you have some subreddits in mind when you make that statement, but to call fault to specialized communities for creating somewhat elitist attitudes and centralized opinions ignores the fact that less-than-specialized communities tend to have the same issues, though focusing even further away from the specialized interests addressed in specific subreddits.

>implying that 4chan isn't already an echochamber

4chan isn't really different. Instead of taking your ball to another subreddit where you can now bully everyone who disagrees with you, 4chan just screams at you until you submit to the will of the board or you take your ball to some other website.

Reddit and 4chan are both pretty big echo chambers, it's just the way they (the users) maintain it that's different.

>4chan isn't really different.

>Instead of taking your ball to another subreddit where you can now bully everyone who disagrees with you, 4chan just screams at you until you submit to the will of the board or you take your ball to some other website.

That's precisely the difference that I was referring to when I said that 4chan is more of a melting pot. Either people fit in and stay, or they don't fit in and leave.

By contrast, reddit (and I guess 8chan which I've never visited) operates on a "something for everyone" model which I find more irksome with each passing day. I'm sure it's a great model if you're trying to sell ads, but in terms of UX I think it's the pits.

Combine with the lack of anonymity and prominent karma scores, and you've got a recipe for constant regurgitation of lowest-common-denominator memes, shitposting, and cults of personalty.

That's why reddit is quickly becoming one of my least favourite websites.

I suspect you simply haven't found the right subreddits yet.

Or 4chan board. /m/ is pretty nice if you like mecha.

Eh, I can't really support 8chan. The admin/owner/dev/whatever is an absolutely horrible person.

Not that I've seen. As far as the site goes, the rule appears to be "unless it's literally illegal or breaking the site, I'm leaving it alone", and everything else is in the hands of the subredd- sorry, sub-board mods.

I think this is the only legitimate stance to take when it comes to a UGC site that allows people to set up their own communities. The staff of each board should be responsible for their own moral compasses, with a minimum of interference by the folks upstairs unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

The existence of a doxxing board is distressing, but it's not against any law in the USA. I don't want it there, but I want hotwheels making decisions like that even less. I feel the same way about things like /r/beatingwomen (exactly what it says in the title) or /r/picsofdeadkids on Reddit.

Er, /baphomet is not "a doxxing board." Or, rather, it's not just a doxxing board. It's also a swatting board, and swatting is illegal in the US.

https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/baphomet

You are also 100% incorrect about "only legitimate stance." Hotwheels needs to be clear about what his guidelines are; as long as it's clear what rules the communities operate under, and as long as people are free to decide whether or not they wish to create a community, it's certainly legitimate to have more restrictive rules.

"UGC site" is a red herring. I am creating UGC right now in the form of this post.

I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that actual calls to swat people have been deleted on that board. But, I can't say for sure because I don't hang out there, and the events of GamerGate have me applying a shakerfull of salt to any negative press surrounding 8chan.

And as far as "incorrect", that is your opinion and it is your own, I have a differing one. I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to.

Really, did you miss the qualifier "that allows people to set up their own communities"?

And since I've hit the posting limit:

That is your opinion @zorpner, and nothing I can say will change it. We disagree, vehemently, on the whole "silence is complicity" thing.

@bryantd: Because freedom of speech is a guiding principle, a human right, not just a law, and that guiding principle is a higher priority than people talking about societally-disapproved-of-things. The price of following that principle is that people can and will talk about things that some or even most people don't like.

The idea of cracking down on people discussing things because you personally find it distasteful is, to me, incredibly offensive. I don't like the idea of neo nazis or places where people post pictures of dead children, but I also don't think someone should have the ability to come in and say "No, you can't talk about that."

@bryantd again: Ah, gotcha. In that case, no, I don't think there is a strictly different moral obligation in play.

I get that curated spaces are a thing, and I don't have an issue with those, but the problem I see a lot is that there are N stated rules in a space, but N+X unwritten rules and breaking them gets you in trouble, and oftentimes you don't know what you did wrong. This leads to the superficial projection of freedom of speech and an open community, but in reality, that is not what's happening. I.e. deception. And in an atmosphere of deception, censorship follows. Censorship, to me, being a greater evil than whatever someone could possibly be talking about.

That's the "why", because the moral obligation of free expression, IMO, is a few levels higher than most others.

Heck, even here on HN, this is a problem (though not NEAR as much as some other sites, thanks to Dang and PG and the rest). But still, we have shadowbans and post timeouts and opaque algorithms that kill posts before anyone has had a chance to read them.

I like the idea of a site where the admin has assured that they will not interfere with you unless they have to.

If an admin chooses not to interfere, that does not absolve them from the responsibility of what happens on their site. If they had the power to remove it, and did not, they share in the blame for the consequences.

That's absurd.

Are phone companies liable when criminals use their products to talk on the phone? Are the developers of encryption liable for ISIS encrypting their calls?

Call me when CNN and Fox News get sued for lying, and when Sony gets prosecuted for starting trivial lawsuits to stifle free speech.

Then we can talk about censoring internet forums.

First off, I'm talking about culpability, not liability. Conflating morality and legality (not to mention censorship and providing a platform) makes your entire post nonsensical.

And in the context of culpability, it's obvious that such a relationship only exists when the individual with the power to prevent bad action is aware of the action. So in this case, where Hotwheels is not only a participant in the relevant boards on 8chan but has expressed approval of what's happening, it's easy to hold him culpable (and probably liable as well, for what it's worth).

There's a pretty substantial difference between "I like the idea of a site..." and "only legitimate stance to take."

Can you explain why you think granting the ability to create a sub-board generates a different moral obligation, in your opinion, than granting the ability to create a new post?

Localism, or some generalization of that; it also feels like there's a kind of "principle of least privilege" here. Moderation should happen at the most local level where it's practical, with a community enforcing its own rules according to its own culture. Once you're offering a platform for people to build distinct communities on, you're assuming the position of an infrastructure provider or a government, and you have some of the obligations that go along with that.

Allowing posts on a single board doesn't carry that obligation, because that's not what you're offering; the individual posts aren't and aren't meant to be communities with their own culture. I would still say that moderators have a moral obligation to be open, accountable, and representative of the community they moderate (even if it's a community they didn't want or ask for), and HN does a particularly poor job in this regard (lobste.rs demonstrates that it's possible to run a site like this with an open moderator log).

I'm not asking why you think freedom of speech is a guiding principle and a human right. I get that and I agree that freedom of speech is incredibly important. I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.

This is not a simple problem.

However, it's also irrelevant to my question: why do you think that the admin of 8chan has a different moral obligation vis a vis free speech than the admin of Hacker News? You said that allowing people to set up their own communities was important, and I sincerely don't know why that makes a difference here.

It's OK with me if you misspoke, and you think that Hacker News should operate under the same principles as 8chan.

>I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about that belief in relationship to my feeling

You're doing it wrong.

> I have spent a lot of mental time over the last few years thinking about that belief in relationship to my feeling that it's bad to cause pain.

I submit that the two are not in conflict. The first is a principle that all people should have this right. The second is moral guidance on the subjective application of that right.

People can use their rights for good or for ill. The key thing is that people have that right. It's not a right if someone else's subjective moral judgments can take it away.

> This is not a simple problem.

That depends. Why do you think there is complexity? At a guess, you think others should live by your principles, and so you are conflicted when they do not.

That is a poor guess. I think it's complex precisely because I don't think everyone should be forced to live by the same principles, and because I recognize that some principles conflict. People have been arguing about value pluralism for a while now, so I feel like I'm in pretty good company here.

If free speech wasn't fundamentally important to me, I wouldn't think it was a complex problem, I'd be happy to limit speech.

People who wish to discuss their neo-nazism can go open their own forum wherever they wish, at their own expense -- once the government stops them, we have a problem (assuming they're not actively violating any laws, etc). No one is obligated to host that content, and people who choose to host or continue to host that content are active participants in that behavior. Silence is not complicity -- knowing, and choosing to be silent, clearly is.

Of course, no hosting provider would be obligated to take their money to host them, and any that did would presumably be seen as active participants in their behaviour if they continued to do so, and the same with upstream providers of internet connectivity. So unless someone is willing to take a stand and host that content even if they're seen as complicit for doing so, then no they can't open their own forum anywhere on the internet.

Which wouldn't be so bad if neo-Nazis were the only ones affected, but sadly they're one of the groups least likely to be driven off the internet this way.

OK, thanks -- that clarifies for me! And yeah; right now, for example, it's kind of awkward having this conversation because you've hit a post limit of some kind, which I gotta assume is a moderation thing. Irksome, since I think it's a good discussion.

FWIW, I agree strongly that unclear rules are bad. You should know what parameters you're operating under. I think there's some space for judgement calls, because it's really hard to write rules that cover all possible cases, but I also think it's significantly better to make those exceptions rather than SOP.

Sincere thanks for taking the time to explain. I will not burden you further with having to edit your posts to reply to me, and certainly feel free to drop me an email if you'd like.

The decision has been made in choosing to allow those boards with those moderators; that means complicity in the overall theme of the content.

Why is he a horrible person? Because he was sick of participating on an imageboard where admins arbitrarily decide what does/doesn't get discussed, sometimes based on their personal beliefs?

Yes, that is the most likely reason for someone to think that he is a horrible person. Seriously, if you are interested in an answer you should just ask the question without answering it yourself with your strawman fantasy.

Funny because although I'm paraphrasing a little, it's precisely the reason why Brennan started 4chan. And he has more or less stated this multiple times in writing and through livestream. Christ, you can ask him this and he'll say that.

But I'm guessing blindly believing rampantly biased media surrounding the subject is more your style, right?

I don't know anything about the operator of 8chan. I was objecting to the way that you were asking your question. The form of Why? Because [some unjustifiable reason you made up that is one of many possible]? doesn't serve as a reasonable argument and it doesn't add anything to the discussion other than the slightly passive aggressive tone it has.

If you actually want to call it paraphrasing, I'll go ahead and say that it's an outright misrepresentation of the post you responded to, since it contained nothing to suggest that.

> But I'm guessing blindly believing rampantly biased media surrounding the subject is more your style, right?

Where do I begin?

Care to provide an example or are we supposed to take your word for it?

Because he doesn't force your morals onto others he's the bad person?

Do you like others forcing their morals onto you? Assume they feel the same. Treat people as you'd like to be treated. BAM - Golden ruled!

You could tell me how / why I am wrong. I'd appreciate it.

Fredrick Brennan, the admin of 8chan.co/8ch.net, was born with osteogenesis imperfecta; he's spent his entire life in a wheelchair. He has endured broken bones over 120 times in his life. He is three feet tall. His arms are severely deformed and barely usable without enduring extreme pain. He was surviving in NYC without a personal care assistant on less than 1k per month. Despite these obstacles, he somehow managed to bootstrap his own project. He was on the verge of suicide before his site suddenly became successful last year.

His site fully complies with US law. He immediately removes illegal content as soon as he is made aware of it. He is happy to work with law enforcement whenever necessary.

He is beyond reprimand. As someone who is presumably an able-bodied white man with moderately wealthy parents, you're making your libelous and oppressive comment from a privileged position. You are also perpetuating a hate campaign against the differently-abled.

This hate campaign has included the following attacks:

- Ceaseless coordinated attempts to take his site down via false accusations to his hosting provider that he is supposedly hosting CP.

- Similar attempts to socially engineer his registrar into disabling his domain.

- Incredibly powerful DDOS attacks lasting weeks at a time, the most recent of which even took down his business partner 2ch.net for three days straight, which is the favorite site of approximately 20% of Japan. Imagine if reddit was brought down for 3 days because someone was angry about something that was uploaded to imgur.

- Attempts to destroy his livelihood and drive him back to the precipice of suicide by bullying sites like Patreon into pulling his funding; the goal being to leave him stranded, penniless, and homeless in the Philippines without a personal care assistant.

Separately, these are colossal nuisances. Together, they amount to a murder attempt by a ruthless, bigoted hate mob.

Perhaps the entrepreneurs amongst us don't like it when someone who the brutality of society would miscast as an ugly little man makes a site that isn't afraid of showing it's ugly side and garners moderate success in, if not financial but at least social acceptance and 'bootstrap' paradigms.

Frederick is an inspirational bloke and all these people casting aspersions on his character whilst lamenting m00t's departure for his cultural boldness, despite disagreeing with the content is pure hypocrisy.

Especially given the non-inclusive hate mob moniker attributed to GG by a genuinely terrible cabal of shoddy journalists and their transparent smears.

I believe common sense will prevail in all of this and there will be no victory fanfares or v-days - quietly the press will mature, the trolls will get bored and good websites and reporters will get justified clicks.

The last news I read said that 8chan was gone:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/01/8chan-domain-seized-...

Has that changed?

Yes, there was a temporary domain seizure. Something like this impacts a lot of new *chan sites for the same reason (somebody posts something illegal on a corner of some board, reports it to authorities, entire site gets flattened).

8chan.co still works.

So does http://8ch.net/

Isn't that what they said about reddit? That mod abuse would result in alternative subreddits? Didn't really work out that way unfortunately.

That's how /r/trees came to be. There are other examples. Yes, that is how it works.

there have been several reborn subreddits due to mod abuse.

it doesnt always result in an exodus, but mod abuse has spawned new subreddits in the past without question.

Huh? There are countless examples of this happening. I can think of a dozen off the top of my head...

Of course it's not easy, but it shouldn't be easy. Mods spend a lot of time building up their communities. It should take an equal amount of work to create a competing subreddit.

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