<story><title>The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan</title><url>https://www.4chan.org/news?all#118</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krelian</author><text>8chan can&amp;#x27;t be mentioned because it&amp;#x27;s a competitor I assume? But what about Gamergate, why is it taboo to discuss it?</text></item><item><author>pervycreeper</author><text>This is not a surprising development, there has been speculation that Poole has been readying the site for sale in the past few months. He has taken action to sanitize the site by suppressing discussion of Gamergate and 8chan (mention of either was a bannable offense), and more recently a purge of &amp;#x2F;pol&amp;#x2F; (that board had been a haven for conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis). The theory had been that he was making the board more attractive to a mainstream audience to attract potential buyers, however, this announcement, along with the new requirements for &amp;quot;volunteers&amp;quot; suggests that something else is at play.&lt;p&gt;I would speculate that recent decisions have been driven more by IRL peer pressure and a desire for social acceptance than any kind of business shark&amp;#x2F; Homo Economicus reason.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wpietri</author><text>My guess is because 4chan was being used as an organizing nexus for a bunch of people widely seen as abusive and misogynist, and he just no longer wanted the headache.&lt;p&gt;Years ago I worked on bianca.com (early community site; founded 1994, Webby 1997, closed in the dot-com bust), which had a similar unfettered-free-speech aspect to it. I feel a lot of sympathy here.&lt;p&gt;Committing to publishing everything is one of those positions that is very appealing to a young idealist. But it grinds you down over time. Partly because of the content: unless you&amp;#x27;re a reptile you are faced with a series of decisions about whether this really awful thing is &lt;i&gt;too&lt;/i&gt; awful or just awful enough. And partly because of the people: most of them are lovely and some amazing things happen when people are free to be themselves. But some are terrible and plenty are just broken, and it&amp;#x27;s those you spend 90% of your time dealing with.&lt;p&gt;I saw one of the Bianca people recently and we talked a bit about 4chan and 8chan and how thoroughly grateful we were to have left those problems behind. No matter how appealing radical free speech is in theory, at the end of the day you&amp;#x27;re the person who has devoted your life to enabling awful people to say awful things. And with GamerGate, to go and do awful things as well. I imagine he&amp;#x27;s just tired of it.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Next Chapter – moot retires from 4chan</title><url>https://www.4chan.org/news?all#118</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>krelian</author><text>8chan can&amp;#x27;t be mentioned because it&amp;#x27;s a competitor I assume? But what about Gamergate, why is it taboo to discuss it?</text></item><item><author>pervycreeper</author><text>This is not a surprising development, there has been speculation that Poole has been readying the site for sale in the past few months. He has taken action to sanitize the site by suppressing discussion of Gamergate and 8chan (mention of either was a bannable offense), and more recently a purge of &amp;#x2F;pol&amp;#x2F; (that board had been a haven for conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis). The theory had been that he was making the board more attractive to a mainstream audience to attract potential buyers, however, this announcement, along with the new requirements for &amp;quot;volunteers&amp;quot; suggests that something else is at play.&lt;p&gt;I would speculate that recent decisions have been driven more by IRL peer pressure and a desire for social acceptance than any kind of business shark&amp;#x2F; Homo Economicus reason.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hatu</author><text>From what I could tell it quickly turned to a misogynist witch hunt with heavy doxxing and harassment and not a lot of actual substance</text></comment>