8chan
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About
8chan, also known as InfiniteChan and ∞chan, is an anonymous image board that allows users to create and moderate their own custom boards. The site gained a large influx of new users following the controversial banning of all GamerGate related threads on 4chan in September 2014.
History
The domain 8chan.co[1] was registered by New York-based computer programmer Fredrick Brennan on October 22nd, 2013.[7] In September 2014, 4chan founder Christopher Poole (a.k.a. “Moot”) posted an announcement explaining why all GamerGate threads were being removed from the site, claiming that many were violating the site’s global “no personal information / raids / calls to invasion” rule (shown below). Many users subsequently flocked to 8chan as an alternative image board with fewer restrictions, began to mockingly refer to 4chan as “halfchan” and lamented the site’s demise with the expression “4chan is kill.”
Patreon Launch
Following the influx of new users to 8chan, Brennan launched a Patreon[6] page to request donations to help fund the website. In the page’s description, Brennan announced that he plans to make 8chan a nonprofit, with any excess money donated to organizations like Wikileaks and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. As of September 2014, it has received over 115 patrons funding $975 per month.
On December 21st, Brennan posted a letter he received from Patreon informing him that his page would be removed for the website violating “new community guidelines.”[12] That day, Brennan changed the titled of the Patreon page to “Fredrick Brennan is Creating Videos About Hachi the Cat!”, which featured a video explaining that he would be releasing videos of his cat to help pay for his aid to help take care of it (shown below). Additionally, Brennan launched a donation page for 8chan on the crowdfunding site Gratipay.[13]
2ch Partnership
On September 22nd, 2014, Brennan tweeted an announcement that 8chan would be partnering with 2ch, becoming the Japanese imageboard’s international division.
Features
8chan allows users to create and moderate their own custom boards, similar to subreddits on Reddit. In order for a board to remain on the site, it needs to receive at least one post per 72 hours and the moderator must log in once per week. The site contains only one global rule to “not post, request, or link to any content illegal in the United States of America.”[5]
On September 20th, Brennan posted an explanation for how the site’s moderation works and why he decided to implement it that way.
The idea of this system is to minimize the trust needed in moderators to prevent “do it for free” moderators from accepting bribes (sexual or otherwise) to corrupt the site as has happened with 4chan.
Mod Heriarchy system.
- 8chan allows anyone who wants to to become the moderator of their own board.
- They are given free reign to institute whatever rules they wish on their boards as long as they do not affect the global rules.
- Mod have free reign to institute any rules they wish as long as they don’t collude with the global ones.
- Mods of the largest boards are promoted to Global Mods. This is devised by an algorithm but only the promotion proceeds with the admin’s express approval.xpress approval.
- New Global mods. are sent a message congratulating them for their promotion and an explanation of their duties.
- Those duties are to simply delete CP, excessive spam and other ilegal content that comes on the server and ban the posting users and their IP ranges.
- Mods that abuse their powers to ban users for other reasons recieve a large penalty. This penalty consist of being stripped of their mod status and losing their boards.
- A replacement mod will be selected from the userbase of that board which the admin seems suitable.
Thus, the only people who moderate 8chan.co are those who have a stake in the site itself because they own the boards. Thus, they are not really doing it for free – they are simply protecting their boards by protecting the site as a whole. It is in their interest to keep the sitefree of illegal content so taht their boards stay up. If they abuse their power, the boards that they worked hard to create is stripped from them
This means that there’s only one person that needs to be trusted: me. If I could have found a way to remove myself from the trust model. I would have, but that is impossible given someone has to run the server
After the partnership with 2ch, The title of Moderator was changed to Volunteer.
About the Founder
Fredrick Brennan is a web developer and designer employed by the company Razor Clicks.[9] 8chan users affectionately nicknamed him “HotWheels” in reference to his use of a motorized scooter caused by his bone disorder osteogenesis imperfecta.[8]
Click here to view the KYM Q-A with Fredrick Brennan
On April 9th, 2014, Vimeo user J.R. Heffelfinger uploaded an interview with Brennan on Al Jazeera America in which he discusses his life in Brooklyn, New York. On September 21st, Redditor VidiotGamer submitted the video to the /r/KotakuInAction[10] subreddit.
Traffic
On September 20th, 2014, Brennan tweeted that 8chan had become “the second largest imageboard” and provided a list comparing “posts per hour” between the top boards on 4chan and 8chan.[11]
Google Removes 8chan From Search Results
Around August 12th, 2015, the domain 8chan was removed from Google’s search results. This was after numerous reports to Google of 8chan hosting child pornography. Users of 8chan that did go on the site during this time were greeted by the following message on all boards.
On August 17th, 2015, Google did not list 8chan again on their search results, but instead updated their search results to show the site when googling “8ch.net” and “site:8ch.net”. The google search “8chan” as of August 19th, 2015, will not list the site. Related searches for 8chan will still produce a warning about child abuse content.[14]
Search Interest
External References
[2] Twitter – Infinite Chan
[3] NY Times – City Newcomer Is Let Down by a Stranger
[6] Patreon – Fredrick Brennan is Creating Free Speech Friendly 4chan Alternative
[8] Wikipedia – Osteogenesis imperfecta
[9] RazorClicks – RazorClicks
[10] Reddit – Meet Fredrick Hotwheels Brennan
[12] Pastie – Patreon message to Brennan
[13] Gratipay – InfiniteChan
[14] arstechnica –
8chan-hosted content disappears from Google searches [Updated]
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Top Comments
Jurou: The Persona 5 MC
I guess you could say that the point of 4chan is rather “moot” huh?
Kekkats
Bitch please..16chan is online.
Comments 357 total
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