The rise and fall of 4chan

The last rites are being read for one of the internet's most controversial forums after it was hacked, reportedly by a rival internet faction.

Some believe the development could "spell the end" of 4chan, said Sky News, after more than 20 years of influence and notoriety.

What is it?

The concept of 4chan is simple, said the broadcaster – it's an online forum where anonymous users share pictures and text. But what keeps many of its 27 million users coming back for more, said the BBC, are the site's "more controversial pages".

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Why is it controversial?

4chan's meme content was the "funniest" thing my "14-year-old brain" had ever "laid eyes on", said Wired's Ryan Broderick. But what began as a "hub" for internet culture and an "anonymous way station for anarchic true believers" evolved into a "fan club for mass shooters" and the "beating heart" of far-right fascism. It became a "virus" that "infected every facet" of life, from the "slang we use" to the politicians "we vote for", he added.

The forum had been notorious in online circles for some time, but it came to mainstream attention in 2014 during Gamergate – the vendetta of harassment campaign against women in gaming. This resulted in "bomb threats, death threats" and women "fleeing their homes", said Sky News.

“Websites like 4chan create a surrogate family, same way you can form one at a bar,” Arthur Jones, a documentary-maker, told The Guardian. "You sit around, break each other’s balls, talk some shit, have fun and feel like you belong." Jones' first feature doc was about perhaps the most famous creation of 4chan – Pepe the frog who became a cultural touchstone for the alt-right. "Suddenly, the friendly frog was being given Hitler moustaches and Trumpian combovers by fringe extremists," said The Guardian, with users pairing the "reluctant mascot with racist, homophobic and antisemitic invective".

In this way 4chan helped "birth" a variety of "domestic terrorists", said Vice, as well as a "weaponised ideology of irony" powered by an ingrained sense of "nihilism" spawning "neo-Nazis, incels, and folks who identify as both". Perhaps unsurprisingly, this led to existential issues for the forum.

What's gone wrong?

The forum's future was first called into question in 2022 when Elon Musk bought Twitter, a development that meant there was "really no point to 4chan anymore", said Wired.

A former extremism reporter, Ben Collins, told the outlet that the forum's user base moved into a "bigger ballpark and started immediately impacting American life and policy. Twitter became 4chan and the "4chanified" Twitter "became the United States government".

Then came the hack. Earlier this week, a message appeared on parts of the site with the words: "U GOT HACKED". The hacker posted screenshots allegedly showing 4chan's "back end, source code, and templates to ban users," said Tech Crunch, along with a list of the names of 4chan moderators and "janitors," or users who can delete posts and threads but don't have full moderator access.

What next?

There's a "growing feeling" that 4chan will stay offline, said PC Gamer, and a lot of people feel "maybe" that's not such a bad thing. A 4chan moderator said that work on restoring the site is underway, but a number of users "seem to have accepted that this really is very likely the end".

But some think it is a bit too soon to write it off and the site seems to be "slowly and stutteringly" coming back online, said Sky News.