Gamergate and Donald Trump was a 4-6 year period depending on where you put the needle. There were 10 years before it and now close to 5 years after it. The people who continue to hammer about it are just announcing that they don't understand the site and are complaining about ancient history. The most popular board right now is the video game generals board, and second place belongs to the regular video games board.
The site was markedly different before and after those events. /pol/ didn't exist before those events and aggressive alt-right rants didn't constantly leak into every other board from it (and get treated with kid gloves or be allowed by mods, who were specifically instructed to do so).
Frog in boiling water moment. Most of us have had enough experience with the platform before, during and after this period to know that it's not going back to what it was.
If you live outside of a city in America you will be shocked how many community events are organized and advertised exclusively on Facebook, how many local businesses eschew any online presence aside from a Facebook page, etc. Some towns got into the internet in 2012-2015 and basically got stuck there.
Uh, yes? What kind of functions are you trying to attend? If you go to C3 and show people your Facebook account, you will rightfully be mocked (unless it's an admin account you're not supposed to have).
Pretty much any major gathering of people older than 25 will have people asking for your facebook/instagram. At least in my experience. This includes real life functions like fundraisers, meet-ups, club events, anything involving a charity or an official event. As someone without a Meta account, I'm just as shocked by it as anyone else.
You better believe 4chan is as much of a government space as those other social media sites are. Just because you don't have to give three forms of ID and a mobile phone number to post doesn't mean they're not involved.
It's an illusion, a very believable one in an internet where billionaires try to goad you to include your name and address with every thing you post. I don't see why people care so much about Doxxing when every social media company makes them do it for free.
It's, funny enough, identical to people who conflate all of old 4chan with /b/. The current most popular boards are video game boards and have been since Covid hit. There's a site called 4stats which charts this, and shows how the end of Trump's presidency spelled the death knell of /pol/ dominating 4chan. Which, by comparison, was four years. It's been five years since then. It's kind of like how the golden age of /b/ was a shade over three years (2004-2007) but all of old 4chan is equated to the memes made in this prehistoric era.
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.
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/.
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.
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.
