Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Moot Sells 4chan To 2channel Founder Hiroyuki Nishimura

Posted by samzenpus on from the your-problem-now dept.

An anonymous reader writes: A year after stepping down from the day-to-day running of the site following a mass user rebellion over moderation issues, Christopher 'moot' Poole has transferred ownership of the once nefarious 4Chan to 2channel founder Hiroyuki Nishimura. “Hiroyuki is literally the only person in the world with as much if not more experience than myself in running an anonymous, large destination community that serves tens of millions of people,” Mr. Poole said in an interview. “He’s the great-grandfather of all of this.”

8 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. First time I first hear of something on Slashot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    First time I first hear of something on Slashot!

  2. Merge Math by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

    That averages out to "3 Chan".

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  3. commentsubjectsaredumb by Falos · · Score: 2

    2channel is similar technically, culturally, and even lineage'ly. It's 4chan's big brother. I don't know anything about Nishi, but my impression is that he's the sort who is familiar with the nature of the beast, as opposed to some suit who though buying 4chan would be a great captive (lol) audience.

    Not that I'm saying "why is this news" but it doesn't seem like they should expect any dramatic changes just yet.

    1. Re:commentsubjectsaredumb by interval1066 · · Score: 2

      4chan now is an anti-Japan meme-hating shitposter site filled with anonymous cowards.

      On /b/, yes. And worse. Much worse. Like pretty sick worse. But not so much on the other sub boards. There can be some pretty interesting discussions on those. And I'm not so sure there's a down side to hating memes.

      --
      Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
  4. anonymous ? not so much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Last time Hiroyuki Nishimura was involved in managing an "anonymous" board he ended up selling the its users data.

    1. Re:anonymous ? not so much by Sibko · · Score: 3, Informative

      Here's a basic summary of this guy and the events around 2ch:

      2014 2ch takeover incident
      -In 2012 the rights to 2ch were given to Jim at Racequeen Inc. Hiroyuki announces he is no longer the admin of 2ch, but still remains the defacto admin behind the curtains .
      -2ch ran a service where anons payed approx 35 US dollars so they could post on 2ch if they were banned or couldn’t post because of their ISP (similar to the 4chan pass)
      -this service helped pay for the server fees
      -August 2013, the service gets hacked. Those who registered to the service had their names, address, credit card numbers/security codes leaked. comment info was also leaked, people were able to search the 2ch archives and find out who posted what using the leaked comment info.
      -It was also discovered that Hiroyuki was sending other personal info of posters to companies outside of 2ch.net
      -After the hacking incident Hiroyuki is unable to pay for the server fees because the 2ch pass service was shutdown.
      -On April Fools day Hiroyuki announces that 2ch is being taken over.
      -The leader of the coup Jim fires the janitors, sizes down operations, upgrade the servers, and improve other things to accommodate the anons who were neglected under the Hiryoku administration.
      -Jim becomes the new admin of 2ch.net

      -Hiroyuki retaliates by creating a new anonymous message board 2ch.sc. 2ch.sc is just a clone of 2ch.net. It literally copies and pastes all the posts on 2ch.net to its message boards.

        2ch.sc allows thread simulator blogging (copy paste blogs) which have been a problem in the past and were outlawed on 2ch.net

      Why did hiroyuki create 2ch.sc ?

      Hiroyuki (Mirai Kensaku Brazil) had signed a contract with a data mining company named Hotlink and sold them the personal data / user comments from 2ch.net.
      -After the server take over by Jim, and the fact that Hiroyuki no longer had the rights to 2ch.net, he was no longer able to give the data mining company the data, so he created the clone 2ch.sc to fulfill Hotlinks contract.
      -Since it wasn’t a contract with Racequeen (Jim) , Jim stops the servers from sending the user comment data and other personal info to hotlinks servers. He also prevents hiroyuki’s 2ch.sc from copying comments by blocking its requests.
      -Anons of 2ch discovers that Hiroyuki also had money ties with the thread simulator bloggers who were racking thousands from PPC ads and advertising by laundering comments from 2ch

      Hiroyuki didn't just sell user information, he encouraged janitors to ban posters so they would purchase more passes to get around the bans, and he had certain political viewpoints censored and banned after being paid to do so.

      I can't imagine /pol/ existing for very long under Hiroyuki, and the already rampant viral/guerilla marketing taking place on /v/, /vg/, and /g/ is probably only going to get worse.

  5. can you imagine the harassment? by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    moot was probably harassed in ways us mere mortals couldn't even dream of

    i would have sold too. anyone would have

    most angry users probably protested moot's new moderation in acceptable ways

    but, being 4chan, a sizeable amount probably protested in ways we don't even want to know human beings can treat each other short of actual violence

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  6. Re:Now if only by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't worry . . . as soon as Dice understands what /. is all about . . . they will sell it . . .

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!