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Comment by vlyan

15 hours ago

8chan's /pol/ wasn't any different than 4chan's. the reason why the 4 is tolerated but the 8 got axed is that 4 is a honeypot and 8 wasn't.

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vlyan

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filoleg  13 hours ago

> the reason why the 4 is tolerated but the 8 got axed is that 4 is a honeypot and 8 wasn't

That's certainly a take.

My personal take is that 4chan actually complies with the US laws, specifically the ones around promptly removing+reporting any illegal content that the US cares about (e.g., terrorism threats/CSAM/etc.), and 8chan doesn't.

Out of curiosity, what makes you consider 4chan to be a honeypot, as opposed to it just being a platform that simply complies with the relevant laws?

I will admit, I've spent barely a few minutes on 8 in my lifetime, so I am not equipped to judge the nuance of their situation much. With 4 though, it's been an on-and-off thing for me over the past ~15 years.

  • vlyan  11 hours ago

    we've seen several websites that do not break US law get evicted by registrars, ISPs, DDoS protection services, and other Internet landlords. 4chan miraculously survived multiple mass hysteria periods of the past decade without (iirc) any major disruptions. same as Russian 2ch -- miraculously untouched by Russia's rapid North Koreaization even though its /pol/ is overwhelmingly anti-regime.

  • kodoman  3 hours ago

    It's was mostly a slightly more edgy 4chan with actually some more varied boards and wider range of political views (/leftypol/) was a thing If I remember. So mostly dumb teens and later the whole Q-Anon mentally ill boomers who took over once the board was brought by one of them much to displeasure of the edge teens. In short if that is a threat to a government and a society it's a weak government and society, comparing it to Al-Qaeda or some kind of comparable threat to anything government or nation is crazy.

meowface  11 hours ago

1. It is extremely likely neither 8chan /pol/ nor 4chan /pol/ were or are honeypots.

2. Untrue. I heavily used both (not as a right-winger; just as a decades-long anonymous imageboard user who sometimes finds it fun to rile people up in /pol/ boards). 8chan's was a lot worse and was shut down for a reason.