It really is a bum rap he gets. It’s the anonymous nature of 4chan that lead to it being the infamous shithole that it was and is. Even when he was actively working on moderating the place it was constantly beyond his abilities and the abilities of the volunteers he brought on board to assist. It did get much worse when he left however.
Really though, in my opinion he should and could have seen the outcome we got as inevitable. 4chan is a bad place, but so is/was 2chan. In almost exactly the same ways in fact. Back when those sites were just getting started I myself bought into the idea that truly anonymous forums like 2chan and 4chan were the only way to have fair and unbiased discussions among the users. Unfortunately the experiment breaks down under the weight of people just being terrible to one another on purpose.
Yah, this is what I’m wondering basically. People who are defending him- if he knew it was going bad, so he took the money and ran, well, he’s not a good guy in this.
Sure, but that doesn’t make him free of culpability for what he created. The amount of damage that place has done to the world is hard to even calculate, so I struggle to see why people are rushing to defend him. Peoples’ lives have been ruined, families destroyed, an attempted coup… I get that he wasn’t there when the house burned down, but he lit the fire and then sold the house. It matters little that he didn’t see that the house might burn down. He is still responsible. So I question the value in people defending him against a little snark here on BB compared to what he did. We are all responsible for the communities we create.
If you name your bar “We don’t even kick Nazi’s out of here” and make blind bartenders the primary selling point for going there, you think you might be culpable for having a nazi bar?
Shudder. I’m working on a BBS app that doesn’t have any central control or servers, no moderation from the top, doesn’t depend on DNS, it’ll be open source, and definitely doesn’t have a kill switch.
Are you saying that the person who created the forum and presumably played a key role in it being anonymous isn’t responsible for what happened when the anonymous forum turned into a toxic hell hole that is partially responsible for the toxic hellscape those of us that are pale and male regularly have to endure online? Really?
He built that shit, and he’s responsible for what it became.
Because free speech for white men is more important than welfare of the rest of us, apparently.
Don’t forget that white cishet men are always held to a different standard than the rest of us… it’s never “their fault” no matter who they hurt.
This is only the case for people who approach google looking for a job. If you’re targeted by google for recruitment at a higher level, you bypass much of this. Your work speaks for itself. Moot was one such person, they wanted him to make G+ as popular as 4chan, and so directly recruited him.
They knew what he did and wanted him to capture lightning in a bottle for them.
I’m not trying to say that he shouldn’t have some responsibility for what he created, but painting him as some sort of monster isn’t really fair either. I look at it this way: Poole was only 15 years old when he created 4chan. 15! He had no idea what he was getting himself into, he didn’t have the foresight or wisdom at that age to understand where it was going or the damage it would cause, and by the time he had a really clear idea of how terrible the place was getting, he’d been running it for 12 years of his life… it’s hard to just throw away that much time and effort. I’m not sure I would have made the right choice myself.
I’m mostly defending him from the stance of “we all make mistakes”, especially when we’re young. Also, while I can accept that the snark is well deserved, as someone who values the shared history we all have with the internet I feel it necessary to clarify the story that’s being told. There’s more nuance to the tale than what most people are aware of.
Plenty of 15 year olds have a sense of responsibility and understand consequences. Plenty. If you don’t know at 15 that posting misogynistic BS isn’t a fun joke to share among friends, then I don’t know what to tel you.
And of course, he did not remain 15, either. Even if we could blame it on his youth, HE GREW UP!
Right, so we acknowledge that he made a mistake and move on.
I’ll freely admit that I was an active participant in the shithole that was 4chan /b/ in 2003 and did in fact post my fair share of misogynistic as well as racist, ableist and any other ‘ist’ you can think of BS out of the misguided notion that I was being ironic or funny or both. I can only say that I eventually grew up and learned that the shit I posted was in fact not funny or ironic and instead deeply wrong and harmful to the larger internet community. I can only ask the be forgiven for my misdeeds.
Yes, we all grow up and often look at the mess we made when we were younger and cringe.
Could Poole have done more to make up for his mistake? Sure! Does he deserve to be held in contempt for the rest if his life? I really doubt it.
A mistake? He also profited off the misery caused by what he built, But hey, it’s not like it’s real people he caused hurt by his actions right? Pat that boy on the head and give him a high profile job! I mean, he’s a white man, so clearly not fully responsible for his actions… /s
Sorry, I just can’t with this line of thinking. He’s never been held responsible for the hell he unleashed on the world. Ever. The rest of us actually matter and many people were hurt by his actions. But because he’s seen as possessing a skill that some people consider important, he’ll never be held accountable for that. Meanwhile, thanks in part of 4 chan and then 8chan, and other places like that, we have a major resurgence in highly visible and influential white supremacy that has essentially taken over one of our major political parties. He’s not solely responsible for that, but he played a major role in how toxic the internet has become and how some treat the actual humanity of others so very lightly.
Or maybe he does. Maybe we stop forgiving white dudes who contribute in some manner to a toxic culture without holding them to account for that. Because having been given a job at one of the largest tech companies in the world was sure as shit NOT holding him to account for his actions. It was a god damn reward for hurting others…
But I’ve said my piece and really don’t have anything else to say about it.
I just have to wonder what you would do to hold him accountable? Sure he isn’t ‘owed’ a job any more than the rest of us are, but would you see him unemployed? Do you want him imprisoned? What’s the solution? Wouldn’t it be more healthy to simply accept that he’s moved on from being ‘The Guy Who Founded 4chan’ and is just trying to live his life?
Enabling hate-mongering and harassment for profit means that someone like me doesn’t give any more of a damn about his life than he would ever give about mine.
I don’t know about currently, but back when Poole was in charge he had a difficult time keeping the place afloat. Server and bandwith costs ate what little money he could generate from the minimal ads that were ran and those were hard to find to begin with because of the sites growing notoriety. It’s not even clear if he made any money at all when ownership of the site changed hands.
Poole only bothered to clean up the site when he started seeking employment in the tech industry. 8Chan literally could not have existed if Poole hadn’t first spent a decade harbouring child abuse images.
(8Chan was started by Brennan after Poole finally banned child abuse images after a decade of hosting child abuse images. So, in a way, Poole is responsible for the Gamergators, MAGAmen, and 1/6.)
