I will always hate moot for being a spineless fucking coward, letting /pol/ run rampant and destroying every board on 4chan.
He could have pressed just one button, and we'd never have the incel movement, the alt right or the massive resurfacing of white nationalism among young people.
Moot had the power to change Internet culture for the better, but chickened out for fear of being doxxed, even though he was Time Magazine Man of the year.
That, and banning W.T snacks.
God, I fucking hate him.
He could have pressed just one button, and we’d never have the incel movement, the alt right or the massive resurfacing of white nationalism among young people.
Even when his identity as Chris Poole was revealed, a lot of 4Chan thought it was a joke considering his initials of "CP" and last name were both seen as meme references.
The energy is bigger than one man. He couldn't have stopped thr reactionary forces building up in nerd culture. It is interesting to ehat extent it might have been curtailed but society at large is doing a conservative swing so no one could guess
at the same time, we've seen that deplatforming is effective. it's not trivial to create a replacement space when a group gets deplatformed.
just look at the challenges we've had building hexbear! it's arguably better than what preceded it, but we objectively have a smaller audience, etc.
when Trump was finally deplatformed after losing the election, he struggled to reach nearly as many people.
I sincerely think that earlier, more aggressive deplatforming across a range of sites would have meaningfully hurt the fascist movement in this country, even if it was only temporary or only to an extent or whatever.
I agree with you but as a massively reformed white dork that was hanging out in that absolute shitpit roughly in the beginning until way too long after it became infested, 4chan was not the platform white nationalism used to organize at the time. Deplatforming them there would have helped a little bit, sure, but it was a concerted and organized effort by stormfront(unironically) to infiltrate and control the culture of 4chan.
Before any real effort was put into combating stormfront by govs etc at the time, they already had a platform to organize and launch their efforts from. That's how it is that they managed to take over 4chan in the first place. Numerous people ranted and raved about it posting receipts at the time but it got lost or drowned intentionally in the sea of shit, and without any real place that was already organized to counter it, stormfront won.
I think it would have been a crucial moment to prevent (or at least massively reduce) the merging of "meme culture" or whatever the fuck it should be called, and like rampant blatant white nationalist rhetoric, but I think that's a lot more obvious in retrospect than it was (especially to 'apolitical' white guys who grew up in safe bubbles) at the time.
Not to excuse it at all, just to provide what I remember as order at which that shit took place. Gamergate was their victory lap, not their opening shot.
Also to be clear (edit): I agree with everything you've said though and it would have helped and absolutely should have happened. Nothing was in disagreement just kind of adding to the conversation/context.
They got rid of the original /pol/, which was /news/. They got rid of it because it was drawing stormfront people to the site and those people used to be a point of ridicule there (although in a very classist/ableist way). Then they created /pol/ to replace it after a while because people kept spamming other boards with political shit. It was a containment board.
I think that if he had banned /new/ and /pol/ and enforced stricter rules against racism that a different site would be associated with the alt right movement. Maybe tumblr and 4chan swap places in that timeline.
You can stick 'Nazi' in front of any one of those words and there are groups like that out there, so....yes, Tumblr would basically be co-opted by them.
I will always hate moot for being a spineless fucking coward, letting /pol/ run rampant and destroying every board on 4chan.
He could have pressed just one button, and we'd never have the incel movement, the alt right or the massive resurfacing of white nationalism among young people.
Moot had the power to change Internet culture for the better, but chickened out for fear of being doxxed, even though he was Time Magazine Man of the year.
That, and banning W.T snacks. God, I fucking hate him.
This is pure idealism lol
Death to America
Yeah this is Great Man Theory.
The incels and racists would have just burrowed deeper into the substrata of the internet.
4chan actually did take action against child pornography and god knows there's still that shit bring traded on the internet.
except 4chan was a fairly popular subculture, so forcing the wignats somewhere else would have set them back significantly.
The movement would be nowhere near as popular if they had nixed pol and started banning for racist spam.
Yeah, it would have helped, but the basic tools to create all the modern chud shit we see today already existed.
Even when his identity as Chris Poole was revealed, a lot of 4Chan thought it was a joke considering his initials of "CP" and last name were both seen as meme references.
The energy is bigger than one man. He couldn't have stopped thr reactionary forces building up in nerd culture. It is interesting to ehat extent it might have been curtailed but society at large is doing a conservative swing so no one could guess
at the same time, we've seen that deplatforming is effective. it's not trivial to create a replacement space when a group gets deplatformed.
just look at the challenges we've had building hexbear! it's arguably better than what preceded it, but we objectively have a smaller audience, etc.
when Trump was finally deplatformed after losing the election, he struggled to reach nearly as many people.
I sincerely think that earlier, more aggressive deplatforming across a range of sites would have meaningfully hurt the fascist movement in this country, even if it was only temporary or only to an extent or whatever.
I agree with you but as a massively reformed white dork that was hanging out in that absolute shitpit roughly in the beginning until way too long after it became infested, 4chan was not the platform white nationalism used to organize at the time. Deplatforming them there would have helped a little bit, sure, but it was a concerted and organized effort by stormfront(unironically) to infiltrate and control the culture of 4chan.
Before any real effort was put into combating stormfront by govs etc at the time, they already had a platform to organize and launch their efforts from. That's how it is that they managed to take over 4chan in the first place. Numerous people ranted and raved about it posting receipts at the time but it got lost or drowned intentionally in the sea of shit, and without any real place that was already organized to counter it, stormfront won.
I think it would have been a crucial moment to prevent (or at least massively reduce) the merging of "meme culture" or whatever the fuck it should be called, and like rampant blatant white nationalist rhetoric, but I think that's a lot more obvious in retrospect than it was (especially to 'apolitical' white guys who grew up in safe bubbles) at the time.
Not to excuse it at all, just to provide what I remember as order at which that shit took place. Gamergate was their victory lap, not their opening shot.
Also to be clear (edit): I agree with everything you've said though and it would have helped and absolutely should have happened. Nothing was in disagreement just kind of adding to the conversation/context.
This is true. Alot of specifc chan culture would never have had the chances to devop.
They got rid of the original /pol/, which was /news/. They got rid of it because it was drawing stormfront people to the site and those people used to be a point of ridicule there (although in a very classist/ableist way). Then they created /pol/ to replace it after a while because people kept spamming other boards with political shit. It was a containment board.
Fun fact: This same guy said that moot was the most paranoid person he ever worked for, and even sending out paychecks, he used a fake name.
deleted by creator
:le-pol-face: "B-But muh :freeze-peach: "
I think that if he had banned /new/ and /pol/ and enforced stricter rules against racism that a different site would be associated with the alt right movement. Maybe tumblr and 4chan swap places in that timeline.
Tumblr? The furries, queers, and communism website?
You can stick 'Nazi' in front of any one of those words and there are groups like that out there, so....yes, Tumblr would basically be co-opted by them.
Nazi communism :thonk:
Nazbols
:visible-disgust:
Tumblr already had a rather seedy underbelly
It would've just been 7chan (set up because moot banned child porn).
“WEEBS, GRAB YOUR DAKIMAKURAS”
.....why did I google dakimakura.....
It would just have been reddit
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if he had put his foot down when the all the nazism was still ironic, things would've been loads better now.