4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google(cnbc.com)
cnbc.com
4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-moot-has-left-google.html
383 comments
He was interviewed on TED around that time
https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
> Not surprised he lasted so long at Google.
Is it hard to 'last' at google? I have never gotten that impression.
Is it hard to 'last' at google? I have never gotten that impression.
The median tenure of a Google employee is 1.1 years.
I'm fairly sure that these very low numbers for median tenure (not just for Google but the other tech companies as well) are a result of the huge percentage of new hires. That number does not mean that the average Google employee will only be at the company for 1.1 years.
e.g. if nobody ever leaves the company, but you always double the number of employees every year by very aggressive hiring, the average tenure according to that metric is 1 year.
e.g. if nobody ever leaves the company, but you always double the number of employees every year by very aggressive hiring, the average tenure according to that metric is 1 year.
I don't think Google's hiring is increasing fast enough to explain the low rate. It looks like they increased about 10% from 2019 to 2020.
However, it's also unclear exactly how 1.1 number is calculated. It looks like it comes from PayScale, which doesn't give, as far as I can tell, a methodology:
Is that the median amount of time that all current employees have had with the company so far?
Or is it the median of all of the employees that used to work there & moved on, which would exclude people that have continued to work there?
Or is it some type of survival analysis that takes such factors into account?
However, it's also unclear exactly how 1.1 number is calculated. It looks like it comes from PayScale, which doesn't give, as far as I can tell, a methodology:
Is that the median amount of time that all current employees have had with the company so far?
Or is it the median of all of the employees that used to work there & moved on, which would exclude people that have continued to work there?
Or is it some type of survival analysis that takes such factors into account?
Pretty strange place where the average employee is perpetually a new-comer. At least that's the picture this painted for me.
It's anecdotal but my understanding as someone who hasn't worked there is it seems like either people leave < 2 years or have no plans whatsoever of ever leaving.
At least in engineering that doesn't comport with my experience at all. I knew maybe a couple of people who left the company over 4 years. If anything people seem to stay much longer at Google.
Like someone pointed, majority of them are new employees. Most of my friends left around the 4 year mark when they hit the compensation cliff.
That’s tilted based on how much hiring they’re doing. A company that nobody leaves that hires 100% new employees has a median tenure of 1 year. Even if the growth is 50% per year, your median tenure will be less than a year and a half no matter how much your turnover will be.
Mean or median? Those are two very different things and I suspect you mean mean.
Does that include contractors It's generally expected you spend six months just ramping up, so this number is really skeptical for me.
I heard that contractors last, on average, a few months longer than employees.
Standard deviation?
They said the median, which is the middle number. But I suspect they meant mean.
[deleted]
HBO's Silicon Valley even lampooned how easy it is to stick around, with "Big Head" and others hanging out on the roof all day.
"Rest and Vest" is a thing.
"Rest and Vest" is a thing.
I spent four months at Google collecting double pay and stocks and had no responsibilities. They literally paid me to vacation (e.g. I went to visit Google Japan while chilling), rest and to enjoy life without work. I didn't like any of the other teams at Google which I was eligible for so I left for Apple.
Could you clarify what you mean by "double pay"? Do you mean you 2x the hours you would normally have worked or something else I'm missing?
It was salary, and it was a multiplier given on that base salary while we looked for other opportunities at Google. This is how they deal with folks who are left over after reorganizations or divestments.
[deleted]
Sorry but that story does not scream 'smart'
I love the heck out of that story
Long time HN lurker here -- I find the mention that he was a PM with Google Maps to be particularly interesting. In case it has gone unnoticed, "Google Maps" and Google's associated business product "Google My Business" appear to be silently being developed into Google's successor product for Google+. Google My Business now allows business owners to "post" updates to their Google Business listing which appear on Google Maps as posts "From the owner," and, once posted, users with Google Accounts can interact with and "share" these posts. Google My Business also appears to be replacing Google Beacon, a physical device once needed for location-based ad-targeting, now deprecated in favor of directing businesses to connect their Google My Business listing to their Google Ads (AdWords) account.
And there is also this thing (don't recall its name) where celebs can post short stories now, answering e.g. questions
I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/ for over a decade and my opinion is moot is a decent guy who sold it after he tried to reign in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the site for it. I don't think Google would have hired him if it weren't for that redeeming quality.
I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground United Nations. It's anonymous so people around the world can express themselves - even in a way I might find horrifying - and I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they might be concerns left unsaid im polite society.
It's anonymous but your national flag is automatically assigned, and if you hide this or use a "meme flag' like a pirate flag, you will be criticized and ignored as a likely troll, trying a "false flag" operation.
4chan/pol/ is interesting, I don't know about the other boards since I don't visit them.
I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground United Nations. It's anonymous so people around the world can express themselves - even in a way I might find horrifying - and I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they might be concerns left unsaid im polite society.
It's anonymous but your national flag is automatically assigned, and if you hide this or use a "meme flag' like a pirate flag, you will be criticized and ignored as a likely troll, trying a "false flag" operation.
4chan/pol/ is interesting, I don't know about the other boards since I don't visit them.
In order list of threads from browsing /pol/ for people who want to know how 'diverse' it is without visiting:
- Anti-vax
- Anti-gay parents
- Goose
- Ben Shapiro praise thread with a dash of anti-semitism and a whole lot of "i hope all ni**rs die"
- Praising George Floyd mural vandalism
- Anti-transgender
- Praising white nationalism/white ethnostate
- Praising 'national rape day'
- Anti-Islam
- Anti-race mixing
- Illuminati
- Celebrating police shooting blacks
- British royals news
- Anti-mask, anti-Biden
- Silver
- Anti-liberal white women as betrayers of the white race
Keep in mind I just am reading the threads in order. This is not diverse at all. Maybe 'diverse' in the sense that these white supremacists are posting from across North America and Europe. This is almost all far right white supremacist and misogynist talking points (strong overlap between the 2), almost surely disproportionately posted by young white men.
- Anti-vax
- Anti-gay parents
- Goose
- Ben Shapiro praise thread with a dash of anti-semitism and a whole lot of "i hope all ni**rs die"
- Praising George Floyd mural vandalism
- Anti-transgender
- Praising white nationalism/white ethnostate
- Praising 'national rape day'
- Anti-Islam
- Anti-race mixing
- Illuminati
- Celebrating police shooting blacks
- British royals news
- Anti-mask, anti-Biden
- Silver
- Anti-liberal white women as betrayers of the white race
Keep in mind I just am reading the threads in order. This is not diverse at all. Maybe 'diverse' in the sense that these white supremacists are posting from across North America and Europe. This is almost all far right white supremacist and misogynist talking points (strong overlap between the 2), almost surely disproportionately posted by young white men.
There's plenty of other boards on 4chan where you can find people from all viewpoints posting. /cgl/ is well known to be majority female, and posters on /lit/ usually express center or left viewpoints. Even on /pol/, within a thread there will often be dissenters from the normal far-right average poster. Compared to other sites like Reddit where communities and posters with certain viewpoints are straight up banned, it's a breath of fresh air.
The fact that posters have to engage with a contradictory post instead of just downvoting it as on reddit has always been the strongest suit of 4chan. It's a great foil to the tiresome hivemind-eyness and tendency for only 'approved' opinions to be allowed to flourish on reddit.
>almost surely disproportionately posted by young white men.
Aside from the fact that you pretty much took the bait with /pol/ there, you should take a look at their irl meetups and compare them to average reddit meetups. You would be wildly surprised by how non-white the average 4chan meetups are.
Aside from the fact that you pretty much took the bait with /pol/ there, you should take a look at their irl meetups and compare them to average reddit meetups. You would be wildly surprised by how non-white the average 4chan meetups are.
I didn't 'take the bait', what you're doing is gaslighting.
It's not that I'm a 'snowflake' or 'I don't understand chan humor', what they're doing is actually fucked up and dangerous even if they justify it as 'trolling' or 'irony' that should be ignored.
There is nothing normal about that boards pre-occupation with calling for racial extermination. I don't give a damn if they're posting that 'ironically', there is nothing normal about that type of constant, obsessive 'joking' about mass murder behavior to that degree, and repeating those things so much can lead to people truly becoming obsessed with those ideas, then justifying and actually carrying those actions out (like the Christchurch racial terror attack).
It's not that I'm a 'snowflake' or 'I don't understand chan humor', what they're doing is actually fucked up and dangerous even if they justify it as 'trolling' or 'irony' that should be ignored.
There is nothing normal about that boards pre-occupation with calling for racial extermination. I don't give a damn if they're posting that 'ironically', there is nothing normal about that type of constant, obsessive 'joking' about mass murder behavior to that degree, and repeating those things so much can lead to people truly becoming obsessed with those ideas, then justifying and actually carrying those actions out (like the Christchurch racial terror attack).
Not recognizing it as trolling and intentional agitation makes it more dangerous. You are taking the bait as the Christchurch shooter intended;
One of the goals of his bloodshed, he wrote, was to “agitate the political enemies of my people into action, to cause them to overextend their own hand and experience the eventual and inevitable backlash as a result.” He said he wanted to “incite violence, retaliation and further divide.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/asia/new-zealand-gu...
One of the goals of his bloodshed, he wrote, was to “agitate the political enemies of my people into action, to cause them to overextend their own hand and experience the eventual and inevitable backlash as a result.” He said he wanted to “incite violence, retaliation and further divide.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/asia/new-zealand-gu...
> Not recognizing it as trolling and intentional agitation makes it more dangerous.
I mean this is just flagrantly wrong.
I mean this is just flagrantly wrong.
How so?
Never called you a snowflake, but your whole framing of the situation reads exactly like what a journo would write while lacking any semblance of understanding of the source material beyond just the surface level.
>what you're doing is gaslighting
How does me saying that the 4chan isn't as white-dominated as you say it is (with a hard proof, given that you can literally take a look at pictures from irl meetups from both 4chan and reddit, and then compare yourself) count as gaslighting?
>There is nothing normal about that boards pre-occupation with calling for racial extermination.
Will it make you feel better, if I told you that you can go and see those threads in many directions, including Indian-poster threads getting into extermination-tier shitfights with Paki and Israeli posters, as well as threads where Italians and Polacks call for mutual genocide? And let's not forget the asian continent shitfight threads, where there is an eternal argument between Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean posters trying to prove to each other who should've genocided whom at which point in history, with occasional oil being poured into the dumpster fire by Vietnamese and Indonesian posters.
The board isn't pre-occupied with racial extermination. It is pre-occupied with edgy content that you cannot find elsewhere. Given that knowledge, it is understandable why most of it ends up being just wild trash. But there are definitely occasional gems in the rough that can be found there that cannot be found elsewhere.
>what you're doing is gaslighting
How does me saying that the 4chan isn't as white-dominated as you say it is (with a hard proof, given that you can literally take a look at pictures from irl meetups from both 4chan and reddit, and then compare yourself) count as gaslighting?
>There is nothing normal about that boards pre-occupation with calling for racial extermination.
Will it make you feel better, if I told you that you can go and see those threads in many directions, including Indian-poster threads getting into extermination-tier shitfights with Paki and Israeli posters, as well as threads where Italians and Polacks call for mutual genocide? And let's not forget the asian continent shitfight threads, where there is an eternal argument between Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean posters trying to prove to each other who should've genocided whom at which point in history, with occasional oil being poured into the dumpster fire by Vietnamese and Indonesian posters.
The board isn't pre-occupied with racial extermination. It is pre-occupied with edgy content that you cannot find elsewhere. Given that knowledge, it is understandable why most of it ends up being just wild trash. But there are definitely occasional gems in the rough that can be found there that cannot be found elsewhere.
> But there are definitely occasional gems in the rough that can be found there that cannot be found elsewhere.
Can you give an example of a gem? I've only seen the racist trash side (that's certainly what's on the board as of right now).
Can you give an example of a gem? I've only seen the racist trash side (that's certainly what's on the board as of right now).
I know there was a correct math proof to a novel and nontrivial problem that was put there by some anonymous user (probably not in pol but in 4chan). Forgot details of it
It was /a/, the anime board, of all places
https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem
https://mathsci.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haruhi_Problem
Well, for just a singular example from /pol/ (since it isn't a board I frequent much at all given the super low signal-to-noise ratio, I prefer more hobby-specific boards, such as /o/ for car-motorcycle discussions and /mu/ for music-related stuff), people there were looking into and brought upon pedophilic allegations against Peter Bright years before he got actually charged with those (which actually happened just last year[0]). Mind you, not claiming that 4chan had anything to do with the guy getting eventually caught. But the fact that they had those allegations with basic reasoning and evidence before there was even a whiff of it in public is definitely something.
Or when they had "journalists" from big publications trying to go there and interview people on the boards, they got fed so much misleading and obviously bs info on purpose before being chased away, it was definitely entertaining to observe. Especially given how obvious it was that the "journalists" in question came in there with a very specific narrative in mind already, and it all got crumbled pretty much in real time.
Not even mentioning stuff like a solution to a novel math problem (which other commenters have already mentioned), which ended up being cited and is relevant to actual ongoing research in a specific math area.[1]
Do those things count as "gems"? That's purely subjective. But that's the kind of stuff I personally appreciate seeing there.
0. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-journalist-convi...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...
Or when they had "journalists" from big publications trying to go there and interview people on the boards, they got fed so much misleading and obviously bs info on purpose before being chased away, it was definitely entertaining to observe. Especially given how obvious it was that the "journalists" in question came in there with a very specific narrative in mind already, and it all got crumbled pretty much in real time.
Not even mentioning stuff like a solution to a novel math problem (which other commenters have already mentioned), which ended up being cited and is relevant to actual ongoing research in a specific math area.[1]
Do those things count as "gems"? That's purely subjective. But that's the kind of stuff I personally appreciate seeing there.
0. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-journalist-convi...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation#Lower_bounds,...
Trolling journalists doesn't sound like "gems", it sounds like a waste of time (and I'm no fan of most journalists).
The Peter Bright article you posted has no mention of /pol.
The Peter Bright article you posted has no mention of /pol.
>The Peter Bright article you posted has no mention of /pol.
It wasn't supposed to, I just posted it for the context of the court case I was talking about. It would be more weird if the court decision included those, since they didn't contribute to his arrest or anything.
If you are curious, you are welcome to go to any 4chan archiver websites and search for his name to see those conversations.
>Trolling journalists doesn't sound like "gems", it sounds like a waste of time (and I'm no fan of most journalists).
What sounds like a waste of time to you might sound like good entertainment to others. If anything, I would say that the "journalist" going directly to 4chan and attempting to "interview" people there was much more of a waste of time.
It wasn't supposed to, I just posted it for the context of the court case I was talking about. It would be more weird if the court decision included those, since they didn't contribute to his arrest or anything.
If you are curious, you are welcome to go to any 4chan archiver websites and search for his name to see those conversations.
>Trolling journalists doesn't sound like "gems", it sounds like a waste of time (and I'm no fan of most journalists).
What sounds like a waste of time to you might sound like good entertainment to others. If anything, I would say that the "journalist" going directly to 4chan and attempting to "interview" people there was much more of a waste of time.
You claimed there was something beyond the surface level racism and white supremacy, but you haven't really provided that. Trolling journalists doesn't make them any less racist, especially when they use racism for trolling.
There doesn't seem to be anything "deeper". Just straight up white supremacy.
[EDIT] (since I'm now throttled for some reason)
You can go on /pol right now and see it's full of white supremacy and hate. You claimed there's some deeper meaning to all of that. There's not though, it is exactly what it looks like.
There doesn't seem to be anything "deeper". Just straight up white supremacy.
[EDIT] (since I'm now throttled for some reason)
You can go on /pol right now and see it's full of white supremacy and hate. You claimed there's some deeper meaning to all of that. There's not though, it is exactly what it looks like.
> You claimed there was something beyond the surface level racism and white supremacy, but you haven't really provided that.
You seem to be hyperfixating on one out of 3 examples I mentioned. Did you miss the part about a proof for an unsolved math problem or early allegations against someone who went on to be charged for that exact same thing years later?
Not even mentioning other boards that are hobby-specific, like /o/ (car-related stuff) or /fit/ (fitness related stuff). If you see no value in it, that's fine. But "everything i don't like has no value" is not the way to live life.
You seem to be hyperfixating on one out of 3 examples I mentioned. Did you miss the part about a proof for an unsolved math problem or early allegations against someone who went on to be charged for that exact same thing years later?
Not even mentioning other boards that are hobby-specific, like /o/ (car-related stuff) or /fit/ (fitness related stuff). If you see no value in it, that's fine. But "everything i don't like has no value" is not the way to live life.
There should be a "Somebody's Law" that when someone on the internet says "can you provide an example of x" and then you provide an example of x, they will usually argue that it's not really an example of x.
Do you understand the concept of a "containment board"? Because that's basically what 4chan is. Everyone there is aware that "3 letter" agencies are monitoring. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Containment%...
Do you mean that's what /pol/ is?
What exactly was the bait in a front page filled with hate?
And why would I judge an online community based on the offline actions of a very small sub population?
Should I be impressed that non-white people also go there to spew hatred unrelated to white nationalism?
And why would I judge an online community based on the offline actions of a very small sub population?
Should I be impressed that non-white people also go there to spew hatred unrelated to white nationalism?
Subcultures have shibboleths. In the same way WallStreetBets wasn't making fun of the mentally handicapped, it would be dangerous to take any chan at face value.
Shibboleths exist to exclude people outside the subculture stereotype - and a good way of doing that is to be offensive. Some subcultures desire to remain as subcultures.
Part of why shibboleths work is because we as a species tend to stop engaging rationally the moment we feel attacked - we switch to being defensive and actually entrench our own values further.
The 4chan shibboleth attacks everyone. No matter who you are or how you identify you're going to be debased and mocked openly - that's kind of the point.
Shibboleths exist to exclude people outside the subculture stereotype - and a good way of doing that is to be offensive. Some subcultures desire to remain as subcultures.
Part of why shibboleths work is because we as a species tend to stop engaging rationally the moment we feel attacked - we switch to being defensive and actually entrench our own values further.
The 4chan shibboleth attacks everyone. No matter who you are or how you identify you're going to be debased and mocked openly - that's kind of the point.
> The 4chan shibboleth attacks everyone
I see plenty of posts attacking and calling for the killing and complete extermination of non-Whites, Jews, homosexuals, and women all over the place but 0 posts attacking straight white males for being straight white males.
Gee, I wonder why that is? I really wonder who is posting all these white nationalist talking points, it's truly a mystery. Could be anyone.
I see plenty of posts attacking and calling for the killing and complete extermination of non-Whites, Jews, homosexuals, and women all over the place but 0 posts attacking straight white males for being straight white males.
Gee, I wonder why that is? I really wonder who is posting all these white nationalist talking points, it's truly a mystery. Could be anyone.
> 0 posts attacking straight white males for being straight white males. Gee, I wonder why that is?
Because that's already done on Twitter; it would be quite boring to pretend that it's something taboo.
Because that's already done on Twitter; it would be quite boring to pretend that it's something taboo.
People don't self identify as "Straight White Male", it's not really a good insult base. You want to insult their country of origin (Ireland, Canada), their hobbies (anime, weightlifting, smoking pot) or their inability to get laid.
"White people have poor taste in food!" isn't very punchy, is it?
"White people have poor taste in food!" isn't very punchy, is it?
"British people have shitty food can't get laid" is kinda different from "all k*kes and ni**rs need to legit be exterminated", isn't it?
They tell jokes about white ethnicities, but don't speak unironically, constantly, and at length about why whites should be racially exterminated like they do towards non-Whites, Jews, Muslims.
They tell jokes about white ethnicities, but don't speak unironically, constantly, and at length about why whites should be racially exterminated like they do towards non-Whites, Jews, Muslims.
You aren't going to hear "British people have shitty food and can't get laid" because it's not really insulting.
That other stuff? That got you mad. You've got multiple threads running about how terrible it is - and there's a good chance you don't even identify as one of those groups.
But let's assume for a moment that 4chan really is concentrated evil. You do realize you are basically advertising for them right now?
That other stuff? That got you mad. You've got multiple threads running about how terrible it is - and there's a good chance you don't even identify as one of those groups.
But let's assume for a moment that 4chan really is concentrated evil. You do realize you are basically advertising for them right now?
That was exactly my point, the jokes against whites there are nothing compared to the vitriol and calls for mass murder posted against non-Whites.
Does one have to be non-White to be opposed to the mass murder of non-Whites? Shouldn't every non-racist psychopath White person be offended by the idea of mass murdering non-Whites?
Does one have to be non-White to be opposed to the mass murder of non-Whites? Shouldn't every non-racist psychopath White person be offended by the idea of mass murdering non-Whites?
Sure they do. "Do it again Bomber Harris" is a meme where they discuss their desire to repeat the firebombing of German civilians in WWII. "Anglos" are beady eyed evil creatures who desire world domination that must be destroyed. In general whites are mocked as war loving incompetent drug addicts, degenerate decadents, among the most socially liberal of any racial group (on a global level), as well as spree killers who shoot up young children. Superior groups like Asians and Jews need to take control. Regularly people call for genocide against whites, mock whites for allegedly being the unwitting victims of genocide, and so on.
I'm not saying all this to imply that /pol/ is even handed but they simply don't talk like "white people have bad food! Lol they season turkey with water!". The entire self justification for their behavior in many cases revolves around believing others hate them as much as they hate others, and people are liable to spread anti-white hate speech just to agitate.
I'm not saying all this to imply that /pol/ is even handed but they simply don't talk like "white people have bad food! Lol they season turkey with water!". The entire self justification for their behavior in many cases revolves around believing others hate them as much as they hate others, and people are liable to spread anti-white hate speech just to agitate.
[deleted]
The status quo gives those classes protection, so they're easy targets for offense.
It's not much fun trolling in alignment with the status quo. People already consider it passe.
It's not much fun trolling in alignment with the status quo. People already consider it passe.
The board is called "politically incorrect" so of course that's what you'll find here. /pol/ is often referred as a "containement board", which means a board made so that people stop discussing certain topics in other boards while using the excuse that they don't have anywhere else to go. This way, other boards aren't polluted by things that people are fed up with. In some way it's a bit like a trashcan, once trash has a designated place to go, you can stop having trash laying around for no reasons.
I honestly don't know the answer to complex questions such as "should this be allowed" or things like that, I'm just glad I can discuss other things in peace and know that political discussion elsewhere can be reported and will be deleted, or even have the user banned.
I honestly don't know the answer to complex questions such as "should this be allowed" or things like that, I'm just glad I can discuss other things in peace and know that political discussion elsewhere can be reported and will be deleted, or even have the user banned.
/pol/ and /b/ are basically half of 4chan today. It's now less a trashcan are more like the country becoming a dumpster.
Even if the country is half a dumpster, as long as it's well defined and doesn't leak too much into the rest, I think it's okay.
Well, in this case everywhere else it stinks at best. Even /lit/ is full of antisemitism nowadays.
Racism, gore, pedos, endless endless pornography...
Yet when people mention that they visit 4chan, they talk about the 'very clever people posting there'. It's like mentioning that you regularly go paddling in your local river in order to collect tiny nuggets of gold, without mentioning that your local river is a flow of excrement, nuclear waste, and malignant psychopaths.
Yet when people mention that they visit 4chan, they talk about the 'very clever people posting there'. It's like mentioning that you regularly go paddling in your local river in order to collect tiny nuggets of gold, without mentioning that your local river is a flow of excrement, nuclear waste, and malignant psychopaths.
It's funny. I've been browsing 4chan all month and I havent seen any gore or pedos. Maybe a few leud pictures (less than 10). Maybe you should actually visit the site instead of just spreading misinformation.
I took you up on that, and visited the technology interest area /g/
Post #1: Comment using the N word
Post #2: Someone using "fag" to insult people who, presumably, use Arch linux. (The term was Archfags)
Post #3: In response to something about headphones: "that deaf faggot [n-word]"
So it's funny. I've been browsing 4chan for 5 minutes and couldn't avoid racism & homophobia in the very first things I saw. Maybe you should actually visit the site instead of just spreading misinformation.
Post #1: Comment using the N word
Post #2: Someone using "fag" to insult people who, presumably, use Arch linux. (The term was Archfags)
Post #3: In response to something about headphones: "that deaf faggot [n-word]"
So it's funny. I've been browsing 4chan for 5 minutes and couldn't avoid racism & homophobia in the very first things I saw. Maybe you should actually visit the site instead of just spreading misinformation.
So we went from "it's nothing but pedos and porn" to "there are some bad words on there". If you find that offensive, maybe stay away from the internet.
Racism and homophobia aren't just bad words, and they were literally in the first three things I looked at.
If you find that hard to understand, maybe stay away from HN where we try to have at least some minimum of reason in our discussions: you either lack that by minimizing racism and hatred to "bad words" or you are a troll arguing in bad faith.
If you find that hard to understand, maybe stay away from HN where we try to have at least some minimum of reason in our discussions: you either lack that by minimizing racism and hatred to "bad words" or you are a troll arguing in bad faith.
I think you are the one doing the conflating. You've jumped from "these words are sometimes used" to "these words are used solely for the purpose of expressing racist and homophobic feelings".
> "these words are used solely for the purpose of expressing racist and homophobic feelings".
There's no other way to use these words. They're always racist and homophobic. That's the point, /pol is a cesspool of racism and homophobia.
There's no other way to use these words. They're always racist and homophobic. That's the point, /pol is a cesspool of racism and homophobia.
They clearly can, and are in this case used, to communicate information where neither the listener nor the speaker is even thinking about race or sexual orientation, and no comment thereon is made.
If you wish to still call that “racism and homophobia”, then neither of which necessarily has anything to do with race or sexual orientations, or even disdain. — you should also know that your usage of these words is then quite nonstandard, and does not align with what most mean with them.
The word “nigger”, in particular, has been of particular interest of study in how depending on context the word can very much be about race, and negatively so, to a simple form of address that has no implications of race.
If you wish to still call that “racism and homophobia”, then neither of which necessarily has anything to do with race or sexual orientations, or even disdain. — you should also know that your usage of these words is then quite nonstandard, and does not align with what most mean with them.
The word “nigger”, in particular, has been of particular interest of study in how depending on context the word can very much be about race, and negatively so, to a simple form of address that has no implications of race.
> There's no other way to use these words. They're always racist and homophobic.
The way this thread progressed was very fascinating to read.
First, an absurd baseless generalization was made. Then, when challenged, the generalization was narrowed down a bit. Then it was narrowed down again and again until we got this comment which asserts an outright lie.
These words aren't always used in a racist and homophobic way. 4chan is proof of this.
The way this thread progressed was very fascinating to read.
First, an absurd baseless generalization was made. Then, when challenged, the generalization was narrowed down a bit. Then it was narrowed down again and again until we got this comment which asserts an outright lie.
These words aren't always used in a racist and homophobic way. 4chan is proof of this.
These words are always racist. It doesn’t matter what 4chan claims.
> There's no other way to use these words.
Try to step back and move into another level.
What are words?
What is this "vibration of air molecules" hitting my ear?
What is the meaning behind them?
Why so?
Do these certain "frequencies" always mean a certain meaning? Always?
Try to step back and move into another level.
What are words?
What is this "vibration of air molecules" hitting my ear?
What is the meaning behind them?
Why so?
Do these certain "frequencies" always mean a certain meaning? Always?
I don't think that analyzing racial slurs at the level molecular interactions is a useful exercise in understanding racism or hate speech.
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> I don't know what land you're in if it's a place where calling someone a "fa--ot [n-word]" doesn't get categorized into some sort of hate speech.
This is the main point of contention. No one denies that such words are a common occurrence on 4chan, but you believe these words are automatically indicative of racism.
Are you open to the idea that someone who refers to himself as “an Archfag” is simply communicating on his being an Arch Linux user, and not otherwise intending to communicate his sexual orientation, and certainly not to proffer a negative view of his own sexual orientation?
This is the main point of contention. No one denies that such words are a common occurrence on 4chan, but you believe these words are automatically indicative of racism.
Are you open to the idea that someone who refers to himself as “an Archfag” is simply communicating on his being an Arch Linux user, and not otherwise intending to communicate his sexual orientation, and certainly not to proffer a negative view of his own sexual orientation?
Please never visit /r/WallStreetBets. The humor will go right over your head.
What sites do you visit that you regularly see "f--" and the n word?
If you visit anonymous imageboards, it's because you want to be exposed to the widest possible spectrum of humanity. There's a bias towards being offensive simply because those things are not allowed to surface anywhere else. If you stick around despite that, you'll realize the site has a rather unique culture. Occasionally, you'll run into great stuff that could never be expressed in sites such as this one.
You mentioned /g/ -- there is a daily programming thread on that board with a very long history. I've seen some really interesting projects posted there. Some even made their way here eventually. SerenityOS for example.
You mentioned /g/ -- there is a daily programming thread on that board with a very long history. I've seen some really interesting projects posted there. Some even made their way here eventually. SerenityOS for example.
I can understand that sometimes there's decent bit of non-hate content on 4chan, but what sort of great content would you find there that couldn't be expressed here, or in some other forum that isn't full of hatred?
Seeing your comments on a few other parts of this thread makes me think that it's probably better for you not to bother with 4chan. As others have kindly explained to you, insults on there are facetious as well as self describing, and of course, derogatory.
If you can't, or rather won't, see beyond that. Then it's just not for you. And that's fine.
If you can't, or rather won't, see beyond that. Then it's just not for you. And that's fine.
You are correct, hate speech is not for me, and when possible I stay away from places where it would otherwise be unavoidable.
But what people have "kindly" explained have merely been justifications for racism and other hate speech that all seem to ultimately boil down to it being normal for 4chan. That, and the excuse of "oh but they don't really mean it" is pretty thin justification.
But what people have "kindly" explained have merely been justifications for racism and other hate speech that all seem to ultimately boil down to it being normal for 4chan. That, and the excuse of "oh but they don't really mean it" is pretty thin justification.
It is normal there. These elements surface on anonymous forums precisely because they are not tolerated elsewhere.
A very simple pattern of 4chan posting culture is to offend others in order to provoke a debate about what you actually want to discuss. It's the 4chan version of clickbait. The /g/ catalog is absolutely filled with people doing this. Want to talk about Linux? Pretend you're a superior Windows user and mock Linux for not having some feature. File picker thumbnails are a common example. This happens all the time and can generate some rather unique discussions.
Because it's anonymous, you'll see a lot of frowned-upon behavior which can nevertheless be interesting. Everytime some drama happens on GitHub or LKML there might be a random 4chan thread discussing it in the usual offensive tone. It's interesting to read about what people think, especially opinions they wouldn't express if they had to sign the post with their real names.
A very simple pattern of 4chan posting culture is to offend others in order to provoke a debate about what you actually want to discuss. It's the 4chan version of clickbait. The /g/ catalog is absolutely filled with people doing this. Want to talk about Linux? Pretend you're a superior Windows user and mock Linux for not having some feature. File picker thumbnails are a common example. This happens all the time and can generate some rather unique discussions.
Because it's anonymous, you'll see a lot of frowned-upon behavior which can nevertheless be interesting. Everytime some drama happens on GitHub or LKML there might be a random 4chan thread discussing it in the usual offensive tone. It's interesting to read about what people think, especially opinions they wouldn't express if they had to sign the post with their real names.
>A very simple pattern of 4chan posting culture is to offend others in order to provoke a debate about what you actually want to discuss. It's the 4chan version of clickbait. The /g/ catalog is absolutely filled with people doing this. Want to talk about Linux? Pretend you're a superior Windows user and mock Linux for not having some feature. File picker thumbnails are a common example. This happens all the time and can generate some rather unique discussions.
I do this with investment ideas on /biz/ regularly, particularly in the stock market general thread and have had some very enlightening debates as a result.
I do this with investment ideas on /biz/ regularly, particularly in the stock market general thread and have had some very enlightening debates as a result.
technically....it's a culture clash. those words mean different things than Merriam Websters......
it's offensive to outsiders....to keep them out lol
it's offensive to outsiders....to keep them out lol
It's offensive to everyone who's not a racist. Is that your definition of "outsider"? What do you think those words mean?
On 4chan, the -fag suffix is barely offensive and can even be a term of endearment.
It’s offensive off 4chan, it doesn’t matter what they think.
>it doesn’t matter what they think
A thought provoking message. Just quoting it for posterity. Carry on.
A thought provoking message. Just quoting it for posterity. Carry on.
He specifically refuted the claim that it was "pedophilia and gore"; your response, while raising valid criticisms, has nothing to do with those two things.
I used to see pedo pics on 4chan... occasionally, if not frequently. That was well before the site gained it's alt-right reputation, though, back when it was more focused on simply "internet outcasts" and very gay friendly.
Go on /b/. You will see pedo shit if you look for loli threads - as I assume they contain pedo images - and quite a bit of gore too.
It's definitely there. Not in /pol/, but /pol/ is a subset of 4chan.
It's definitely there. Not in /pol/, but /pol/ is a subset of 4chan.
very clever people posting there
Nobody denies the extreme cesspool-like aspects of some corners of 4chan.
The one thing you can uncontroversially say is that 4chan is diverse. It's almost like reddit, where each subreddit has its own distinct culture, mods, etc.
I would say that overall, 4ch does attract... a pretty clever crowd. Almost everything there is layer upon layer upon layer of self-reference and iteration. Meta on top of meta on top of meta. Not saying you have to be a genius to "get it" but I don't see a dummy enjoying it.
I'm also saying this as somebody who doesn't particularly like the place. I grew out of that shock humor stuff about two decades ago.
Cleverness is unfortunately not orthogonal to depravity or any number of other awful things. It would be a much better world if most hateful people or those who want to do bad things were also not very smart.
Although I'm also not sure how clever a person really needs to be to understand multiple layers of meta: "Meta" is so ingrained in cultural DNA at this point that anyone born in the last 25 years will understand all of it on nearly an intuitive level, and anyone over that age will still have been bombarded by it for decades-- long enough to mostly still get it.
Although I'm also not sure how clever a person really needs to be to understand multiple layers of meta: "Meta" is so ingrained in cultural DNA at this point that anyone born in the last 25 years will understand all of it on nearly an intuitive level, and anyone over that age will still have been bombarded by it for decades-- long enough to mostly still get it.
Most boards on 4chan are designated safe for work and racism free, and will quickly earn one a global three day ban for posting pornography and gore.
This is very strictly enforced in practice, one doesn't see any nudity or gore remain up on those boards for more than ten minutes before a janitor catches it.
Pornography is allowed on all boards that aren't designated “safe for work”, but gore is only allowed on a very select few.
This is very strictly enforced in practice, one doesn't see any nudity or gore remain up on those boards for more than ten minutes before a janitor catches it.
Pornography is allowed on all boards that aren't designated “safe for work”, but gore is only allowed on a very select few.
Vitriolic hate speech seems to be allowed just about everywhere. Browsing through the first three items in Technology /g/ showed me 2 instances of homophobic and 2 instances of racism. One of them hit both at the same time with "faggot [n-word]".
In general I have much less of a problem with porn or gore than I do with raging hatred.
In general I have much less of a problem with porn or gore than I do with raging hatred.
andyxor(2)
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You could be describing Twitter.
I disagree: That is an extremely diverse selection of hatred, with the occasional inane entry.
It's not nearly as diverse of hatred that 4chan has to offer.
/pol/ is a U.S.A. board that takes a firm single side in the U.S.A. culture war.
Most 4chan boards are largely outside of it and the hatred one sees there does not align with any of the two factions in the U.S.A. culture war and the hatred that flows is indeed very diverse in that sense.
/pol/ is a U.S.A. board that takes a firm single side in the U.S.A. culture war.
Most 4chan boards are largely outside of it and the hatred one sees there does not align with any of the two factions in the U.S.A. culture war and the hatred that flows is indeed very diverse in that sense.
If you compare this list to the types of posts you see on Facebook/Twitter etc. then it's actually quite diverse. I'm not advocating for the good of those topics, but the argument against 4chan is usually "this should never be talked about anywhere". Credit where credit is due: 4chan contains discussions of topics you will not and cannot find on mainstream social media.
> If you compare this list to the types of posts you see on Facebook/Twitter etc. then it's actually quite diverse.
I have never seen this kind of content on Twitter or Facebook, in my own feeds or in trending topics. I would have to actively look. I have however seen a ton of real diverse content from a diverse group of people. This is a lie that where the intent is to downplay the white supremacist content.
I have never seen this kind of content on Twitter or Facebook, in my own feeds or in trending topics. I would have to actively look. I have however seen a ton of real diverse content from a diverse group of people. This is a lie that where the intent is to downplay the white supremacist content.
I think you missed the point. Of course this stuff isn't on Facebook and Twitter. Which means the precence of 4chan actually increases the diversity of content on the Internet.
Having WS content does not "increase the diversity".
It really fucking sucks that you're in my industry.
It really fucking sucks that you're in my industry.
There were better days, many years ago... eventually all not heavily moderated communities will suffer their version of Eternal September.
Communities with no moderation at all sans removing child porn and copyrighted content (to avoid getting v8 by the feds) will always be overtaken sooner or later by the content you just listed because this sort of stuff gets driven out of communities that care about at least some decency. The exception proving the rule is r/worldpolitics, which has no rules per se but there's enough porn to drown out hate speech.
Communities with no moderation at all sans removing child porn and copyrighted content (to avoid getting v8 by the feds) will always be overtaken sooner or later by the content you just listed because this sort of stuff gets driven out of communities that care about at least some decency. The exception proving the rule is r/worldpolitics, which has no rules per se but there's enough porn to drown out hate speech.
Agree 100% with every word you wrote.
Unfortunately, it's hard to cite 4chan as an example when talking about the merits of unrestricted free speech vs. moderation/curation since most people think it was always that bad.
eventually all not heavily moderated communities
will suffer their version of Eternal September.
Unfortunately, it's hard to cite 4chan as an example when talking about the merits of unrestricted free speech vs. moderation/curation since most people think it was always that bad.
>White
You would be surprised.
You would be surprised.
No we wouldn't.
Making an alt account because I don't want to be misconstrued as 'supporting racism' or something. I did a quick search and it seems like 4chan is definitely not all white people. It may be majority white but I doubt it.
Using the 4chan JSON API, I looked at the /pol/ and /int/ boards to see the range of countries posted. /int/ has posts from 99 unique countries. /pol/ has posts from 100 unique countries, but many of the 'countries' are just labels naming a specific flag, for example "LGBT". (Note that "White Supremacist" is literally a flag/label you can choose... But so are "Tree Hugger", "Anarchist", "Facist", "Hippie", and "Black Lives Matter".) I tried to make a pastebin but their filters didn't like the word "white supremacist" so here's the code instead: https://pastebin.com/9FhDM8Ch
Given the list of countries, I'd say it is nearly impossible that most of these people are white. Some of these people are definitely using VPNs to change their country code, however it's also important to note that many VPNs are banned from posting without a 4chan Pass. They cannot all be VPNs.
Without spending too much time on it, I found two pictures of /pol/ meetups online:
https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/7qt0h5/4chan_pol_mee... https://www.reddit.com/r/Cringetopia/comments/b3ggfx/4chan_m...
(Trigger warning, the second picture shows Nazi symbolism.)
In both pictures people of color are present, and in one picture white people make up 50% of the crowd. This doesn't make what /pol/ says OK and that I don't condone racist speech online, but it does suggest many of the comments in this thread are incorrect about 4chan's demographics. Ultimately we do not know what 4chan's demographics are.
Why did I bother? For a few reasons: I like Chris Poole and to my knowledge, he's never supported bigotry directly, he just strongly believes in the value of online anonymity. It pains me to see people painting him as a racist. Nobody calls Jack Dorsey a racist when racist things are posted on Twitter. I also don't like it when people imply that people who post racist things must by default be white, or that white people are inherently racist, e.g. "4chan is a racist website so they must be all white". I also am quite interested in the topic of online moderation and how we can create spaces that allow for privacy/anonymity while curbing bad actors. For something else interesting on this topic, this paper is about white supremacy present on Twitter: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/downloa... Note that the paper is from 2016 and white supremacy is still in full-force on Twitter, and really any popular social media site.
Using the 4chan JSON API, I looked at the /pol/ and /int/ boards to see the range of countries posted. /int/ has posts from 99 unique countries. /pol/ has posts from 100 unique countries, but many of the 'countries' are just labels naming a specific flag, for example "LGBT". (Note that "White Supremacist" is literally a flag/label you can choose... But so are "Tree Hugger", "Anarchist", "Facist", "Hippie", and "Black Lives Matter".) I tried to make a pastebin but their filters didn't like the word "white supremacist" so here's the code instead: https://pastebin.com/9FhDM8Ch
Given the list of countries, I'd say it is nearly impossible that most of these people are white. Some of these people are definitely using VPNs to change their country code, however it's also important to note that many VPNs are banned from posting without a 4chan Pass. They cannot all be VPNs.
Without spending too much time on it, I found two pictures of /pol/ meetups online:
https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/7qt0h5/4chan_pol_mee... https://www.reddit.com/r/Cringetopia/comments/b3ggfx/4chan_m...
(Trigger warning, the second picture shows Nazi symbolism.)
In both pictures people of color are present, and in one picture white people make up 50% of the crowd. This doesn't make what /pol/ says OK and that I don't condone racist speech online, but it does suggest many of the comments in this thread are incorrect about 4chan's demographics. Ultimately we do not know what 4chan's demographics are.
Why did I bother? For a few reasons: I like Chris Poole and to my knowledge, he's never supported bigotry directly, he just strongly believes in the value of online anonymity. It pains me to see people painting him as a racist. Nobody calls Jack Dorsey a racist when racist things are posted on Twitter. I also don't like it when people imply that people who post racist things must by default be white, or that white people are inherently racist, e.g. "4chan is a racist website so they must be all white". I also am quite interested in the topic of online moderation and how we can create spaces that allow for privacy/anonymity while curbing bad actors. For something else interesting on this topic, this paper is about white supremacy present on Twitter: https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/downloa... Note that the paper is from 2016 and white supremacy is still in full-force on Twitter, and really any popular social media site.
None of your data is valid.
andyxor(1)
They are agitators and trolls, and you took the bait.
The young white supremacists being radicalized online are taking the bait.
The bait is this silly narrative that the reason they talk in depth and at length everyday about exterminating non-Whites is because it's elaborate "trolling" to own the libs, until they start sprinkling in enough "justification" and repetition to radicalize you into becoming a white supremacists.
Sadly many young men are taking the bait and becoming radicalized online.
The bait is this silly narrative that the reason they talk in depth and at length everyday about exterminating non-Whites is because it's elaborate "trolling" to own the libs, until they start sprinkling in enough "justification" and repetition to radicalize you into becoming a white supremacists.
Sadly many young men are taking the bait and becoming radicalized online.
You keep taking the bait. Stop being so emotional, jesus. Use logic
You're echoing and embracing a narrative of fear. Tell me, is the white supremacy in the room with you now?
I know people in real life that got radicalized from /pol/. It is not a joke and it's not ironic, it's a real thing.
Are the posters in this thread arguing that George Floyd was a junkie, trolls too? There is a ton of legitimate white supremacy here masked by "trolling". It's just a convenient cover, but the beliefs are authentically held.
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This statement is simultaneously both true and false.
It's true in that yes they are agitators and trolls.
But it's false in that the line between unserious troll and serious activist was blurred or erased long ago, and most recently with Trump being elected president.
It's no longer possible to distinguish between unserious troll attempt and serious statement when such a large audience subscribes to the trolling as their actual reality.
It's true in that yes they are agitators and trolls.
But it's false in that the line between unserious troll and serious activist was blurred or erased long ago, and most recently with Trump being elected president.
It's no longer possible to distinguish between unserious troll attempt and serious statement when such a large audience subscribes to the trolling as their actual reality.
Are you familiar with the rule of goats?
For those unfamiliar, mbcook's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20187663) captures it:
Ken White’s rule of goats:
Ken White’s rule of goats:
“The Rule of Goats applies. Slightly paraphrased — for this family newspaper — the rule states: If you kiss a goat, even if you say you're doing it ironically, you're still a goat-kisser.”
You don’t get off scott-free just because you say “I was only being ironic“.Maybe it's not diverse because people like you who hold opposing viewpoints are not interested in changing their opinion despite the fact that you can post just as much as they can without being judged for who you are.
Is this something you have considered?
Is this something you have considered?
The diversity pushed by academic institutions and tech companies is the same. They want people from different backgrounds and locations, that are all the same politically. If you disagree with a progressive policy, you get the boot.
4chan is the same. They accept anyone from all over the world. The majority of posters are foreign. If you disagree with their narrative or political ideals, they insult you and tell you to leave. Except on 4chan you don't get banned or your life ruined for disagreeing. It's an actual safe space for ideas.
It's hilarious how similar they are.
4chan is the same. They accept anyone from all over the world. The majority of posters are foreign. If you disagree with their narrative or political ideals, they insult you and tell you to leave. Except on 4chan you don't get banned or your life ruined for disagreeing. It's an actual safe space for ideas.
It's hilarious how similar they are.
We're talking about this site? (NSFW): https://boards.4chan.org/pol
Looks more like an international white supremacist convention than United Nations to me.
And I'm not saying that just because they love using the n-word so much, but that is one of the reasons.
Most posts on there don't seem to be from a diverse audience. They mostly seem to be from the perspective of a young racist white male audience, which is a very small percentage of the world population.
It's very obvious 4chan pol is disproportionately young white supremacist males with all the n-word, misogynist, anti-Jew obsession, white nationalism obsession that dominates the discussions.
I guarantee you the discussion/perspective there is overwhelmingly dominated by young white males with very few female perspectives (50+% of the population) and non-White perspectives (majority of the population).
Looks more like an international white supremacist convention than United Nations to me.
And I'm not saying that just because they love using the n-word so much, but that is one of the reasons.
Most posts on there don't seem to be from a diverse audience. They mostly seem to be from the perspective of a young racist white male audience, which is a very small percentage of the world population.
It's very obvious 4chan pol is disproportionately young white supremacist males with all the n-word, misogynist, anti-Jew obsession, white nationalism obsession that dominates the discussions.
I guarantee you the discussion/perspective there is overwhelmingly dominated by young white males with very few female perspectives (50+% of the population) and non-White perspectives (majority of the population).
I can only recommend watching Innuendo Studios' _Alt-Right Playbook_ series for a deeper understanding of the dynamics, but if you don't have the time I'd at least recommend watching this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4
All of 4chan, but especially /b/, is built around "haha just kidding ... unless", ridiculing people for getting offended while "trolling" with the most nefarious opinions and defending them "as a joke". This escalated with /pol/ which at some point became mask-off unironically white supremacist.
This is not just about 4chan being too white and too male and everybody self-identifying as NEET (whether as a joke or in earnest). The perpetual "ironic" regurgitation of racist, misogynist and anti-Semitic talking points attracted Nazis because it allowed them to hide in plain sight and they very successfully used it as part of their pipeline by getting people to repeat their jokes until they stopped laughing.
All of 4chan, but especially /b/, is built around "haha just kidding ... unless", ridiculing people for getting offended while "trolling" with the most nefarious opinions and defending them "as a joke". This escalated with /pol/ which at some point became mask-off unironically white supremacist.
This is not just about 4chan being too white and too male and everybody self-identifying as NEET (whether as a joke or in earnest). The perpetual "ironic" regurgitation of racist, misogynist and anti-Semitic talking points attracted Nazis because it allowed them to hide in plain sight and they very successfully used it as part of their pipeline by getting people to repeat their jokes until they stopped laughing.
I second the recommendation. Basically, /pol/ centers around irony poisoning. But definitely watch the Innuendo Studios series.
That's partly true but I like to know what that group is thinking. As bad as it is, I don't detect any energy towards violent overthrow of the US Govt as was expressed by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. Maybe elsewhere, but not on 4chan/pol/
There are a lot of people on 4chan from non-European countries. I've seen vile anti-semitism expressed by someone with a Saudi flag. It's not uncommon.
There are a lot of people on 4chan from non-European countries. I've seen vile anti-semitism expressed by someone with a Saudi flag. It's not uncommon.
There is a lot of energy at violently overthrowing the US Government. That sentiment is expressed every time you hear the word "ZOG" or "Golem". It takes a while to parse through it.
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You know there's plenty of antisemitism around the world, especially in places like Iran, which officially denies the Holocaust, that isn't coming from a "white supremacist" place, especially not in the context of American white supremacy.
Considering that we know for a fact that you don't know the ages, genders, nationality, or races of the people with these beliefs, and can only see their beliefs posted anonymously on 4chan, and then you think you have enough information to extrapolate that these people must be white, male, and young, says a lot more about YOUR prejudices than the people on 4chan, quite frankly.
You see hate and just assume the hateful are the gender, race, and age, that you perceive to be the enemy.
Considering that we know for a fact that you don't know the ages, genders, nationality, or races of the people with these beliefs, and can only see their beliefs posted anonymously on 4chan, and then you think you have enough information to extrapolate that these people must be white, male, and young, says a lot more about YOUR prejudices than the people on 4chan, quite frankly.
You see hate and just assume the hateful are the gender, race, and age, that you perceive to be the enemy.
White males make up a disproportionate amount of white nationalists compared to the total population (obviously...?), and white nationalism is disproportionately represented on that board. Thus I suspect that white males make up a disproportionate amount of posters on /pol/.
I'm sure there are other races posting racist things there as well, but I said disproportionately young white males tend to post white nationalist talking points, which I stand by and this shouldn't offend anyone.
I am in no way implying most white males are white supremacists. I'm saying most white supremacists are white males which is an uncontroversial obvious statement that I stand by.
You cannot convince me that most white nationalists are non-white, that's a silly deflection.
I'm sure there are other races posting racist things there as well, but I said disproportionately young white males tend to post white nationalist talking points, which I stand by and this shouldn't offend anyone.
I am in no way implying most white males are white supremacists. I'm saying most white supremacists are white males which is an uncontroversial obvious statement that I stand by.
You cannot convince me that most white nationalists are non-white, that's a silly deflection.
[deleted]
We're talking about these white supremacists? Google image search "pol meetup"
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/975/547/c10...
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/975/547/c10...
>I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground United Nations.
Always fascinating how they refer to themselves.
You have n-words.
Then potato n-words for the irish (and lithuatians)
Pasta n-words for italians
Bongs for the british
Leafs for canadians
Burgers and Amerimutts
Toothpaste for the netherlands
Gypsy for hungarians and romanians (who are at a perpetual shitposting war against each other)
Hohols for the ukranians
Finngolians
The usual suspects for anyone of any asian country, extra special hate towards the chinese and Xi's internet army.
and on and on
No matter what nation of the world you are from, they will find an insult for you. It's endearing in a way really.
Oh and also there's someone shitposting from a research facility in Antarctica.
Always fascinating how they refer to themselves.
You have n-words.
Then potato n-words for the irish (and lithuatians)
Pasta n-words for italians
Bongs for the british
Leafs for canadians
Burgers and Amerimutts
Toothpaste for the netherlands
Gypsy for hungarians and romanians (who are at a perpetual shitposting war against each other)
Hohols for the ukranians
Finngolians
The usual suspects for anyone of any asian country, extra special hate towards the chinese and Xi's internet army.
and on and on
No matter what nation of the world you are from, they will find an insult for you. It's endearing in a way really.
Oh and also there's someone shitposting from a research facility in Antarctica.
In a way, it's more equitable if everyone has a slur.
I asked an Australian once why everyone was a C word and he said it was easier than remembering names.
lmao love me some Aussie humor
Reminds me of that W.C. Fields quote — 'I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. '
I think there's a certain value to that. Sort of a modern take on memento mori, but for everyone.
> You have n-words
That you have to blank that out and none of the others, should tell you everything you need to know about how equal or "endearing" this is.
Bongs, Leafs, Burgers... This is all white supremacy no matter how someone tries to reframe it.
That you have to blank that out and none of the others, should tell you everything you need to know about how equal or "endearing" this is.
Bongs, Leafs, Burgers... This is all white supremacy no matter how someone tries to reframe it.
They also have americunts and amerifats if that makes you feel any better.
Still proves my point. You don’t have to censor that.
To their credit, they don't exactly censor anything. The entire voldemorting of the word is one of the more inane things about PC culture. That PC culture cares primarily about black targeted insults doesn't really say much about the inherent "badness" of the word.
I have been on 4chan since at least '05, according to my files. The way people write about it is just ... such a Rorschach blot. Just as an example, that "redeeming" word you used, I would have said "damning." I watched the spin machine rev up like a centrifuge before that really hit the press, I read the ZoePost early on and thought Depression Quest was just awful before I knew word one about who wrote it.
There's so many boards, each with its own culture, but people get out of it whatever bugbear they desire.
There's so many boards, each with its own culture, but people get out of it whatever bugbear they desire.
Depression quest being good or not, being only for some kind of person or all is completely irrelevant. And should be irrelevant to anything that happened after.
Even if it would be the worst game in the world. Cause the really normal response to and small game you don't like is to not play it and maybe write a bad review. Not what happened.
Even if it would be the worst game in the world. Cause the really normal response to and small game you don't like is to not play it and maybe write a bad review. Not what happened.
Correct, but also correct that afterward, you could not critique the game at all without being "a literal Nazi." The journos (as shown in their private mailing list) closed ranks amazingly quickly. I watched perfectly reasonable critiques get removed from comment sections before the comment sections were inevitably shut down "to promote better discourse."
As usual, it isn't the crime, it's the coverup that gets you, and GamerGate was a great example of that.
As usual, it isn't the crime, it's the coverup that gets you, and GamerGate was a great example of that.
There is literally no wonder they "closed ranks" given crap that was going on. And I know, because I personally seen that crap. The level of asshollery going on in general absolutely makes understandable that someone would go trigger happy.
And no, the whole issue was not about quality of single indie twine game. That is just nonsense.
And no, the whole issue was not about quality of single indie twine game. That is just nonsense.
It was a attempt by obviously outsiders to establish cultural dominance in a sphere, where they were neither welcome nor wanted.
Call it SJW-Colonialism and it was repelled by the natives. To go to battle to tell people what they should accept as their escapism, from up high, was a new low.
Call it SJW-Colonialism and it was repelled by the natives. To go to battle to tell people what they should accept as their escapism, from up high, was a new low.
Started as a /b/tard circa '08 and now read mostly /pol/ and /lit/ because their threads most often follow an argument to its completion. This makes for good reading IMO.
Still go back to /b/ occasionally although the flavor of that board has shifted to a more twitter-like direction that I do not favor. It remains one of the few places online where I can read shitposts with actual artistic merit. Some Facebook groups are only just now maturing to the stage where good satire exists.
I have a theory that forums mature like humans going from childhood name-calling to adult dialectics. But then again /b/ seems to be regressing so maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.
Still go back to /b/ occasionally although the flavor of that board has shifted to a more twitter-like direction that I do not favor. It remains one of the few places online where I can read shitposts with actual artistic merit. Some Facebook groups are only just now maturing to the stage where good satire exists.
I have a theory that forums mature like humans going from childhood name-calling to adult dialectics. But then again /b/ seems to be regressing so maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about.
Wait, have you ever had an argument go to completion on /pol/?
I almost never have. On /lit/, maybe, but on /pol/ either you get no actual engagement, all the serious replies are drowned by spam and the thread necros, or one of the argumentators when called out simply stops replying or switches to shitposting.
You can sometimes have a good argument to completion, but it's very rare. Unless the argument is something the 4chan hive finds uncontroversial or is empathetic to.
I almost never have. On /lit/, maybe, but on /pol/ either you get no actual engagement, all the serious replies are drowned by spam and the thread necros, or one of the argumentators when called out simply stops replying or switches to shitposting.
You can sometimes have a good argument to completion, but it's very rare. Unless the argument is something the 4chan hive finds uncontroversial or is empathetic to.
I have found I can spend hours on 4chins reading some of the most interesting stuff on the Internet. It takes some work and time but there is gold there. There are some scary smart/genius anons posting.
This too. There are some really smart people arguing positions that I never see argued in the mainstream press. I have much better understanding of pro-gun people now than I used to. I still don't agree with them, but I am closer to understanding.
That's the reason I frequent r/ccw . Although I'm not from the US, I find interest in understanding the CCW culture; Their reasoning and thoughts. I've learned quite a lot from there through the years.
Indeed. /pol/'s main value is entertainment at the sheer level of batshit insanity but the number of times they've either been startlingly prescient or else had serious insider knowledge is significant. I've seen things there that took days to hit CNN. For example, claims about Peter Bright's pedophilic exploits hit /pol/ years ahead of his arrest.
This really gets to the core of my love/hate relationship with the "weird" internet. I was an Ars-poster ~20 years ago and hadn't heard any of those rumors. Never ventured into 4chan for more than 5 minutes at a time. But I did spend a lot of time in the Gawker comment section and reading things like the Crazy Days and Nights blog. It definitely gives you a different perspective on journalism. There are so many stories which exist in a different plane, completely known by mainstream journalists but unreported for decades. It's insane.
Always reminds me of the classic 1978 Johnny Rotten interview BBC interview where he calls out Jimmy Savile. (Video features a gross Piers Morgan pretending like he never heard about Savile.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4OzI9GYag0
We don't need the white supremacy, but we as a society do need the crass asshole who's not afraid to knock down the elites by a peg or two. (And the John Stewart "jesters" of the world do not count.)
Always reminds me of the classic 1978 Johnny Rotten interview BBC interview where he calls out Jimmy Savile. (Video features a gross Piers Morgan pretending like he never heard about Savile.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4OzI9GYag0
We don't need the white supremacy, but we as a society do need the crass asshole who's not afraid to knock down the elites by a peg or two. (And the John Stewart "jesters" of the world do not count.)
Personally I blame social media. The phenomenon of linking your online presence to your real identity is a disaster. Now instead of ignoring racist garbage from xXBoner_Lord_420Xx you see it being posted by John Smith, head of Accounting for Company Inc.
I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/
for over a decade and my opinion is moot is a
decent guy who sold it after he tried to reign
in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the
site for it. I don't think Google would have
hired him if it weren't for that redeeming quality.
Some private pictures were taken from a user's account on my old site, and published to 4chan circa 2007. Chris was very sympathetic and was eager to help take the pics down and/or find the culprit.
Even though parts of 4ch turned into an absolute cesspool, that is not who moot is. He simply created an anonymous free-speech platform.
4chan is obviously not repræsentative for the public at large, no forum is, and that different subboards have very different overall views there highlights this.
Most of the other boards hate /pol/ by the way and “Go back to /pol/.” is commonly heard elsewhere, which shows the differing views.
Most of the other boards hate /pol/ by the way and “Go back to /pol/.” is commonly heard elsewhere, which shows the differing views.
> and I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they might be concerns left unsaid im polite society.
That's an interesting point. How do you tell if something is a real concern that is left unsaid vs just a fake concern? Or the difference between a concern that is quite prevalent vs a concern that is just being astroturfed?
That's an interesting point. How do you tell if something is a real concern that is left unsaid vs just a fake concern? Or the difference between a concern that is quite prevalent vs a concern that is just being astroturfed?
You can't, really. But no internet forum is immune to astroturfing and lying. Be it Hacker News or Reddit or 4chan. Just use your best judgment and don't take any of it too seriously.
Welcome to /pol/ you will never leave.
It's more interesting now for a couple of reasons. The board was raided by "social justice warriors" during GamerGate and many stayed to keep arguing. Another reason is 4chan/pol/ is tamer that it used to be. The worst kind of uninteresting stuff moved to 8chan after GamerGate.
I suspect some also go siphoned off when the larp that was Q migrated from 4chan to 8chan.
[deleted]
It’s interesting to see how Moot gets the blame for the all the things that happened after he sold off 4chan.
Especially when you consider how anonymous and the occupy movements were all the rage among woke leftists a few years back, and they originated from 4chan.
Especially when you consider how anonymous and the occupy movements were all the rage among woke leftists a few years back, and they originated from 4chan.
1- who the hell is "Moot"?
2- Back in the moot-run days of 4chan, it really was a completely different world. All the weird meme-culture we have now started there. /b/ was both the greatest and worst thing simultaneously. You had literal nazis and neckbeards working together to dox pedos. It was just a completely different place from what it's become all these years later.
I think the internet is just different. Content creation has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than something they do out of interest or just the lulz.
People don’t spend 9 days creating the perfect YTMND thing because they can spend that time on Instagram, YouTube or whatever in pursuit of enough fame to create a career out of it.
The only reason we still have so many memes and so many (less than an A4 page) blog posts is because of how little effort it requires with modern tech.
I think 4chan is actually one of the places that has changed the least. I mean, /b/ without talented users is just 100% shit instead of only being 99% shit, but /tg/ is exactly the way I left it a decade ago.
People don’t spend 9 days creating the perfect YTMND thing because they can spend that time on Instagram, YouTube or whatever in pursuit of enough fame to create a career out of it.
The only reason we still have so many memes and so many (less than an A4 page) blog posts is because of how little effort it requires with modern tech.
I think 4chan is actually one of the places that has changed the least. I mean, /b/ without talented users is just 100% shit instead of only being 99% shit, but /tg/ is exactly the way I left it a decade ago.
It feels as though “internet culture” of the old days have been limited excessively, and the entire internet been left beholden to the standards of U.S.A. professionalism, indeed because of profits, because the advertiser so demands it.
Boards have increasingly enacted rules to cater to advertisers as they found out that simple word filters to stop “bad words” from being mentioned improve their advertisement revenue.
I remember Reddit when the purpose of the voting system was encouraging a laid-back approach by moderators on the logic that objectionable content would be downvoted, and hidden, so that those who did not wish to see it could ignore it, but that's long gone now, and moderators are highly zealous and on top of that one has the hivemind voting system to deal with.
Internet indeed became a pursuit of profit, rather than memes for fun.
And indeed 4chan never bowed to advertisers and consequently actually is not that profitable despite being one of the largest websites.
The culture on, say, IRC channels which do not rely on advertisement is very different from on websites that do and typically enforce various language filters.
Boards have increasingly enacted rules to cater to advertisers as they found out that simple word filters to stop “bad words” from being mentioned improve their advertisement revenue.
I remember Reddit when the purpose of the voting system was encouraging a laid-back approach by moderators on the logic that objectionable content would be downvoted, and hidden, so that those who did not wish to see it could ignore it, but that's long gone now, and moderators are highly zealous and on top of that one has the hivemind voting system to deal with.
Internet indeed became a pursuit of profit, rather than memes for fun.
And indeed 4chan never bowed to advertisers and consequently actually is not that profitable despite being one of the largest websites.
The culture on, say, IRC channels which do not rely on advertisement is very different from on websites that do and typically enforce various language filters.
I think smartphones brought a second Eternal September. The Internet used to largely attract the sort of people who by and large weren't ordinary. Hobbyists, artists, people interested in science, generally creative types. There was an expectation that you were participating in something and not just consuming. It used to be that if you wanted to say something, you had to expend some creative energy and build your own web presence. Now the average internet user is idly flicking through an endlessly scrolling feed to avoid a few minutes of boredom. Mindlessly consuming.
Just one of many nerd subcultures appropriated and gentrified by the masses.
Just one of many nerd subcultures appropriated and gentrified by the masses.
I completely agree. The internet is a completely different space from where it was 20 years ago. Tech ate everything, so everything is the internet now.
Back then we cheered when "legit" tech appreciated those of us from the backwater meme-world by hiring our "leader". Now it seems like tons of people get into things with that as the goal.
Back then we cheered when "legit" tech appreciated those of us from the backwater meme-world by hiring our "leader". Now it seems like tons of people get into things with that as the goal.
> I think the internet is just different. Content creation has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than something they do out of interest or just the lulz.
This is something I've been kind of depressed about lately. I grew up with the internet of the early 2000s, through the blog boom and the early days of YouTube. I used RSS, and was into things like Creative Commons and GPL. Free culture stuff. We had a wealth of cool things that people were making just because they wanted to, and crass commercial motive was hardly something that crossed peoples' mind. Just as app stores killed free web games (far more than the demise of Flash), the growing commercialization of the Web has eroded the wonderful mashup culture that permeated it.
I've been thinking about it a bit lately because I got turned onto actually listening to Hatsune Miku music, and it's a terrific example of what once was: remixing, memetic evolution and building something bigger collaboratively. (Miku has been vaguely on my radar all along, but I never bothered to give the stuff a fair chance until I realized a Wagakki Band song I liked was a cover of one of the most popular vocaloid songs, Senbonzakura.)
* The Leakspin meme was a thing in the early 2000s, combining the Finnish folk song Ievan Polkka with a random anime clip. That was all over the place back then, and I wasn't even a 4chan user.
* Some guy in Japan used the relatively new synth voice bank VC01 Hatsune Miku to release a sort of cover of Ievan Polkka, including a silly redrawing of the box art, which blew up on the Japanese streaming site Niconico and later made it onto YouTube. Which has lead to the character being associated with leaks/spring onions. [1]
* Someone else made the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya" with the same voice, which was later covered with another synth voice and then paired with a now famous animation of a pop tart cat. [2]
* The growing "memetic velocity" surrounding a character derived from a synth voice and the anime art on the box it came in resulted in an absolutely fascinating music scene where synth artists bill themselves as producers and give a performance credit to the synth, releasing their amateur music for free on video sites (and sometimes getting album deals as they grew in popularity). And eventually you get a worldwide phenomenon with global tours of a hologram performing with a live band, drawing from thousands of songs and visual artwork created by whoever wants to contribute. A "wiki celebrity," so to speak.
Kind of random, I guess, but reading up on how that all connects (and was going on in the background of related memes that I was aware of) has kind of restored my faith in the Internet. I think that if you get enough creative people together, you're going to end up with some cool stuff. The question remains, though...would it happen today? (And if not, what do we need to torch to fix it?)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat
This is something I've been kind of depressed about lately. I grew up with the internet of the early 2000s, through the blog boom and the early days of YouTube. I used RSS, and was into things like Creative Commons and GPL. Free culture stuff. We had a wealth of cool things that people were making just because they wanted to, and crass commercial motive was hardly something that crossed peoples' mind. Just as app stores killed free web games (far more than the demise of Flash), the growing commercialization of the Web has eroded the wonderful mashup culture that permeated it.
I've been thinking about it a bit lately because I got turned onto actually listening to Hatsune Miku music, and it's a terrific example of what once was: remixing, memetic evolution and building something bigger collaboratively. (Miku has been vaguely on my radar all along, but I never bothered to give the stuff a fair chance until I realized a Wagakki Band song I liked was a cover of one of the most popular vocaloid songs, Senbonzakura.)
* The Leakspin meme was a thing in the early 2000s, combining the Finnish folk song Ievan Polkka with a random anime clip. That was all over the place back then, and I wasn't even a 4chan user.
* Some guy in Japan used the relatively new synth voice bank VC01 Hatsune Miku to release a sort of cover of Ievan Polkka, including a silly redrawing of the box art, which blew up on the Japanese streaming site Niconico and later made it onto YouTube. Which has lead to the character being associated with leaks/spring onions. [1]
* Someone else made the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya" with the same voice, which was later covered with another synth voice and then paired with a now famous animation of a pop tart cat. [2]
* The growing "memetic velocity" surrounding a character derived from a synth voice and the anime art on the box it came in resulted in an absolutely fascinating music scene where synth artists bill themselves as producers and give a performance credit to the synth, releasing their amateur music for free on video sites (and sometimes getting album deals as they grew in popularity). And eventually you get a worldwide phenomenon with global tours of a hologram performing with a live band, drawing from thousands of songs and visual artwork created by whoever wants to contribute. A "wiki celebrity," so to speak.
Kind of random, I guess, but reading up on how that all connects (and was going on in the background of related memes that I was aware of) has kind of restored my faith in the Internet. I think that if you get enough creative people together, you're going to end up with some cool stuff. The question remains, though...would it happen today? (And if not, what do we need to torch to fix it?)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat
Since your (1) went unanswered, Moot is Chris Poole's online handle (on 4chan specifically, which is somewhat special, given that users on 4chan usually post anonymously) that he was mostly known by before becoming a semi-celebrity.
"only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company.
The original CNBC article https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-mo... lacks this editorial spin. Tech people hop around a lot, 5 years is a solid tenure.
And three positions inside the company seems about right as well.
> Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest
They make it sound like he barely managed to get any stock. That's like saying, "person worked at X for 1 year, just long enough to get 1 year's salary." Well, yeah, but if they left in 11 months they'd get 11 months salary. It's not like if Poole left at 1 year or 4 years or anything in between he would have left with anything different proportionally to his tenure.
What an odd article.
They make it sound like he barely managed to get any stock. That's like saying, "person worked at X for 1 year, just long enough to get 1 year's salary." Well, yeah, but if they left in 11 months they'd get 11 months salary. It's not like if Poole left at 1 year or 4 years or anything in between he would have left with anything different proportionally to his tenure.
What an odd article.
Also it doesn't really match with reality, since they'd usually get refresh grants and have a rolling four year window at all times.
The article sounds like the reporter heard a soundbyte about google's typical four year vesting period, and then did zero actual research into what that means.
The article sounds like the reporter heard a soundbyte about google's typical four year vesting period, and then did zero actual research into what that means.
I don't know--I've heard a lot of people here noting the "4 year cliff" at most tech companies, not just Google. Not all companies give refreshes, and of those that do, it's usually not enough to make up for the initial grant going away.
I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.
I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.
Pardon my ignorance but what is the "4 year cliff" exactly?
When you initially start at Google, say, you get an RSU grant that vests over 4 years. So for 4 years you are getting your salary and on some schedule also getting stock. The stock can be a quite large portion of your total compensation (as in, comparable to the base salary).
After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make less money than during the first 4 years. At that point the incentive is to move to some other company and start the 4-year clock again...
After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make less money than during the first 4 years. At that point the incentive is to move to some other company and start the 4-year clock again...
Ok got it! So I guess the only way for Google to keep the best performers is to eliminate this cliff by giving RSU and/or offering a significant pay increase.
Thank you for the explanation ;)
Thank you for the explanation ;)
It’s typical to get a larger 4-year grant at hire. It’s common to complain about comp drop after 4 years
Depends on the company, I work in tech but for an old company, 5 years isn't very long and there isn't much room for any movement.
The fact that there's not room for movement is exactly why people leave companies, not a reason to stay.
On the other hand, that kind of job is stable, pays well enough, and doesn't demand much outside of 9-5. For people with families, that's a lot more appealing than you'd think.
True, but this is a company where when I logged on the other day there was an article about a guy retiring after 52 years as a delivery driver. Yes, that's right, fifty two years at one company, although I imagine he did small package delivery and feeder work (trailer loads). So not just one position, but pretty close.
For Google it definitely is. Most people jump at 4 year cliff, if they have the option
Ah ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-.... Thanks!
Actually we should already have changed it - that's standard practice when one article cribs from another. But I missed it in this case.
Actually we should already have changed it - that's standard practice when one article cribs from another. But I missed it in this case.
Meanwhile, I've been at the same company for longer than a couple of my coworkers have been alive (though I've changed jobs twice in that time) so "only five years" sounds comparatively short to me.
My wife has been at her current company (large like freescale, flexctronics, jabil) for 8 solid years , and she is still going strong.
Meanwhile I've been at 4 startups, from seed to Series B . I just get bored so easy.. after 3 or so years I NEED a change. Or maybe is because startups dont care about w/l balance and drain you until you quit.
Meanwhile I've been at 4 startups, from seed to Series B . I just get bored so easy.. after 3 or so years I NEED a change. Or maybe is because startups dont care about w/l balance and drain you until you quit.
>only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company
I've never worked anywhere where people were much use before 2-3 years in harness. Too much domain knowledge maybe.
I've never worked anywhere where people were much use before 2-3 years in harness. Too much domain knowledge maybe.
Ron Amadeo is a talented reporter but his transparent smarminess towards anything Google-related has become exhausting in recent years.
A lot of the time it may be warranted. But just as often, like in this article, it definitely is not.
A lot of the time it may be warranted. But just as often, like in this article, it definitely is not.
Sounds like he moved around a bit, so it's not like he was working on just one thing for 5 years.
It's hilarious after all these years shitty journalists still believe Anonymous is a hacker group rather than just some kids trolling.
I mean imagine if Facebook had the option to be anonymous somehow on their platform and called everyone Unnamed who hadn't finished their registration or didn't want to.
You'd see Unnamed responsible for nation-state sponsored terrorism and manipulating the votes of other countries. What a joke.
I mean imagine if Facebook had the option to be anonymous somehow on their platform and called everyone Unnamed who hadn't finished their registration or didn't want to.
You'd see Unnamed responsible for nation-state sponsored terrorism and manipulating the votes of other countries. What a joke.
They were indeed a hacker group at one point. The "everyone is Anonymous" thing worked as an effective smokescreen for a while, and a pool for recruiting. It's like gaming, or sports: tons of people do it casually on the edges, and a handful at the top do it at a very high level for high stakes.
Eventually they moved beyond fun, simple little social causes to more seriously disruptive and economically/politically dangerous stuff, and at that point, not surprisingly, the alphabet agencies slipped in and broke up the party.
Eventually they moved beyond fun, simple little social causes to more seriously disruptive and economically/politically dangerous stuff, and at that point, not surprisingly, the alphabet agencies slipped in and broke up the party.
"the hacker known as 4chan"
Curious definition of 'kids trolling', I have to say.
DDoS attacks as well as actual hacks were performed in the name of 'Anonymous', and at the time of the Stratfor hack, various LulzSec members were already in their late twenties...
DDoS attacks as well as actual hacks were performed in the name of 'Anonymous', and at the time of the Stratfor hack, various LulzSec members were already in their late twenties...
> Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists. It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe the frog memes and the alt-right. The site gave rise to the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous and is often used as a dumping ground for various hacks like the Nintendo Gigaleak. Poole sold 4chan back in 2015, a year before joining Google.
I don't think it's fair to say this without clarifying that a lot of the Q and other deranged stuff started happening after moot left. Nor is Pepe really a recent meme (somewhere I have Pepes saved from like the mid '00s), nor is Anonymous really a group (but that's questionable and a debate that isn't really relevant)... I know there's very little expectations when it comes to reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common knowledge (maybe that's why it isn't clarified?).
I don't think it's fair to say this without clarifying that a lot of the Q and other deranged stuff started happening after moot left. Nor is Pepe really a recent meme (somewhere I have Pepes saved from like the mid '00s), nor is Anonymous really a group (but that's questionable and a debate that isn't really relevant)... I know there's very little expectations when it comes to reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common knowledge (maybe that's why it isn't clarified?).
It's worth noting that the Pepe meme has continued to evolve, and is no longer associated solely or primarily with 4chan. The streamer community in particular has adopted, rehabiliated, and popularized Pepe as a mascot and chat emote. For example, here's Pepe and the "poggers" meme in a recent stream from Pokimane, a streamer with over 7 million followers who made Forbes' 2021 30 under 30 list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETBUJkVMnpc&t=70s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETBUJkVMnpc&t=70s
It was a big thing on Twitch long before any of the negative associations were made with it via media.
Yup. The GPs viewpoint could only have been discovered without firsthand knowledge of the situation.
The original author of Pepe put some work into deassociating it from Pepe The Meme. He hated the while thing.
Yeah, I talked with Matt about it at a party around the time he was going into lawsuits with Alex Jones and some alt-right people. He's a really nice dude. He hadn't been very familiar with 4chan before Pepe became a meme and was bummed that Pepe was being branded a hate symbol since he's writing children's books now. #savepepe
you'd think this would be common knowledge given 4chan is literally an open website, but I always hear these mythologised recountings of it like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult. It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
"Reddit without the good manners"
Anyone admitting that they browse 4chan risks losing social cachet. Risk is too great either in an internet forum or news articles.
The recent Q documentary on HBO was refreshing in that the person doing it actually knew how to explain things even if it feels like it's filler though. Then again that's someone on HBO who's been given permission to be edgy (try pausing some of the posts in the first few minutes).
I wish there was a mainstream site which has 4chan anonymity and fast pace + reddit thread format. Both become hardly usable with either elitism, censorship and people who think upvotes matter or an absolute cancer to follow conversations in threads.
I built this [1] and took it down when I quickly realized I would not have the time or desire to devote to keeping it going.
Edit- it had live (think chat room) but threaded comments and was anonymous (temporary, randomized identites)
I haven't had the heart to completely decommission it yet so I've stood it back up so you can see what I am talking about .
[1] https://blahalla.com
Edit- it had live (think chat room) but threaded comments and was anonymous (temporary, randomized identites)
I haven't had the heart to completely decommission it yet so I've stood it back up so you can see what I am talking about .
[1] https://blahalla.com
This looks pretty neat. Two suggestions: show the room list on the home page and put the about stuff somewhere else. People will figure out what the site is by seeing or interacting and the faster they can the better.
Second, names could be more distinct. The fact they all begin with the prefix "user" (from what I saw) is redundant. Could you mix and match from a short-words list to create unique and memorable names? e.g. RedFoxFun.
Second, names could be more distinct. The fact they all begin with the prefix "user" (from what I saw) is redundant. Could you mix and match from a short-words list to create unique and memorable names? e.g. RedFoxFun.
Good ideas and both easy to implement. Thanks for the feedback
I'd even take an imageboard with reddit or HN moderation over the reddit-style of social media sites we have today. I'd even allow mandatory registration if the posts themselves are still anonymous to other users
Anonymous posting prevents weird popularity cliches from taking over, and post linking via ID allows multiple conversations to flow much smoother than reddit's tree-structured comments. I'd also say that sequential ranking over popularity upvote would prevent as many low-effort hot takes/jokes from always being at the top of each thread, but I'm practice that doesn't really seem to play out like it should.
Anonymous posting prevents weird popularity cliches from taking over, and post linking via ID allows multiple conversations to flow much smoother than reddit's tree-structured comments. I'd also say that sequential ranking over popularity upvote would prevent as many low-effort hot takes/jokes from always being at the top of each thread, but I'm practice that doesn't really seem to play out like it should.
I think 4chan with only slight moderation would be amazing. Get rid of all porn and illegal stuff. Keep the rest. You could advertise and keep the FBI participation to a minimum.
There's always been moderation for illegal content and the janitors do a good job deleting porn from the worksafe boards.
yeah that's what I was aiming for, but without the images and karma-- that's why the users were temporary. No need to whore for internet approval because it really doesn't matter.
https://ratwires.space
Anonymous textboard written in Crystal.
Anonymous textboard written in Crystal.
Without censorship... so you want a place with nazis? 'cause that's what happens.
assuming this is in good faith, please take a look at this list of banned subreddits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
though the world is probably better off without a lot of those, they are not all literal nazi subs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti...
though the world is probably better off without a lot of those, they are not all literal nazi subs.
GP is probably referring to Voat, which was a Reddit alternative with less censorship that went down the gutter within a year.
It won't be 100% Nazis. You'll also have the spammers, pedos, and assorted wingnuts.
Trolls can always take over unmoderated forums because while they can drive the reasonable users out by reducing the signal to noise ratio down to a useless level, the reasonable users have no power drive them out. It's a completely imbalanced power dynamic. All forums need some sort of moderation or they will always collapse once they grow beyond a fairly modest threshold.
Trolls can always take over unmoderated forums because while they can drive the reasonable users out by reducing the signal to noise ratio down to a useless level, the reasonable users have no power drive them out. It's a completely imbalanced power dynamic. All forums need some sort of moderation or they will always collapse once they grow beyond a fairly modest threshold.
"reasonable users" is doing a lot of work here. not everyone desires the same level of discourse you do on every site they visit. /b/ has just about the bare minimum level of moderation needed to comply with US law and a lot of people seem to enjoy using it.
/b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at this point, and as you note it does have some moderation.
Some of the other forums on 4chan might be better examples, but even those have some moderation. Forums like /tg/ have managed to hang on alright, although their total post volume per day is quite small compared to /b/.
Some of the other forums on 4chan might be better examples, but even those have some moderation. Forums like /tg/ have managed to hang on alright, although their total post volume per day is quite small compared to /b/.
> /b/ is a good example of a forum that is only trolls at this point
and some people enjoy that. you don't have to go there if you aren't one of them.
you're not describing some platonic ideal of an internet forum. you're just describing what you personally want out of one.
and some people enjoy that. you don't have to go there if you aren't one of them.
you're not describing some platonic ideal of an internet forum. you're just describing what you personally want out of one.
Sure, if you want a forum that is only trolls then go ahead and leave it unmoderated. Just don't act surprised when suddenly Nazis show up.
[deleted]
Without censorship... so you want communist pinkos? Cause that's how you get communist pinkos.
This
If people's opinions arent watched, selected and filtered, we might get another third reich soon.
Yeah... you just have to make sure the solution isn't worse than the problem. This works okay for a forum or a private club. Not so much the world at large.
Because it never stops at just filtering out the Nazis.
Because it never stops at just filtering out the Nazis.
Indeed, we need a strong regime to overlook and approve everything, on each and every commentary platform, to make sure that wrongthink does not occur, otherwise, we might have a totalitari- oops, too late.
Nothing has more of a "Whoever fights monsters ..." vibe than the endless fixation on Nazis. I suppose we will have to amend the Four Horsemen of the Infoacalypse from "drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles." My vote is that we put "Nazis" in place of "terrorists," given that a well-known anti-DDoS service decided to revoke protections for Stormfront while still providing services at the time to ISIS. Yes, that ISIS, the slow-motion, lovingly filmed execution of infidels ISIS.
Nothing has more of a "Whoever fights monsters ..." vibe than the endless fixation on Nazis. I suppose we will have to amend the Four Horsemen of the Infoacalypse from "drug-dealers, money-launderers, terrorists, and pedophiles." My vote is that we put "Nazis" in place of "terrorists," given that a well-known anti-DDoS service decided to revoke protections for Stormfront while still providing services at the time to ISIS. Yes, that ISIS, the slow-motion, lovingly filmed execution of infidels ISIS.
"You gotta let nazis be a little nazi, otherwise they are going to start killing people again."
[deleted]
>like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult.
It's pretty interesting, because as long as I've been conscious on the Internet it's always been posed as an 'inaccessible cult.' Probably due to all the inside jokes, I guess?
It's pretty interesting, because as long as I've been conscious on the Internet it's always been posed as an 'inaccessible cult.' Probably due to all the inside jokes, I guess?
The 'inaccessible cult.' is about the structure of the board.
First time you go there is a Chaotic mess that feels you went back to 90's.
Then in shock you start to see the subs like /pol/ then you click and bam More chaos.
Threads and threads you are more lost.
Then you click catalog and set order Reply-by-count.
Then it does start to make sense. You read people talking in two ways. On the text and on the image attached.
It is full-duplex com.
In the 90's I used to read my Mainstream media + Pravda (the other side) jornal.
Now I read the local MSM and 4chan (the other side ) jornal.
First time you go there is a Chaotic mess that feels you went back to 90's.
Then in shock you start to see the subs like /pol/ then you click and bam More chaos.
Threads and threads you are more lost.
Then you click catalog and set order Reply-by-count.
Then it does start to make sense. You read people talking in two ways. On the text and on the image attached.
It is full-duplex com.
In the 90's I used to read my Mainstream media + Pravda (the other side) jornal.
Now I read the local MSM and 4chan (the other side ) jornal.
I made it to the site finally and but I got wrecked by step 2. Where is /pol? There is no politics section listed under Boards except "Politically Incorrect" which can't be what you mean as I was immediately hit with the full n-word and wish I had used an incognito browser...
Do many HN users actually frequent this website or should I be reinstalling my OS right about now??
Do many HN users actually frequent this website or should I be reinstalling my OS right about now??
It's exactly the reason people complain about anonymous image boards. But that's what it is. Even the "SFW" boards are filled with stuff that you might find distasteful or downright wrong.
You are safe... don't worry. Unless you started downloading stuff from random users on 4chan. But if you did that i'm not sure we can help you!
You are safe... don't worry. Unless you started downloading stuff from random users on 4chan. But if you did that i'm not sure we can help you!
yep - that's /pol/ - it stands for Politically Incorrect
4chan's indeed a cesspool, and /pol/, /b/, among some others are the worst. In fact, they're called "containment boards" for this very reason.
4chan's indeed a cesspool, and /pol/, /b/, among some others are the worst. In fact, they're called "containment boards" for this very reason.
I promise I mean no disrespect with the following, so I'll preemptively apologize if you're offended.
oh my it's like watching a baby taking the first steps.
oh my it's like watching a baby taking the first steps.
it's always been posed as an 'inaccessible cult.'
You gotta ask yourself "by whom?". Actual users of the site, people having serious discussions about the site, writers of pop articles aimed at non-users of the site, or someone else?
Even then, you have this conflation of /b/ (or I guess these days /pol/) and 4chan at large. Some communities are more welcoming than others.
You gotta ask yourself "by whom?". Actual users of the site, people having serious discussions about the site, writers of pop articles aimed at non-users of the site, or someone else?
Even then, you have this conflation of /b/ (or I guess these days /pol/) and 4chan at large. Some communities are more welcoming than others.
> It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
That's true on a technical level only. But culture matters.
Attitudes like yours were why 4chan was such a surprise to the rest of us. The culture that we all thought was just "ironic" and "edgy" with its casual racism turned out to be... kinda actually racist when right wingers decided to weaponize xenophobia and bigotry. The groupthink of a bunch of almost-exclusively-male incels turned out to be hiding genuine misogyny once they had an enemy to point themselves at in gamergate.
Culture matters. Being an "open website" just describes how it happens, not why.
That's true on a technical level only. But culture matters.
Attitudes like yours were why 4chan was such a surprise to the rest of us. The culture that we all thought was just "ironic" and "edgy" with its casual racism turned out to be... kinda actually racist when right wingers decided to weaponize xenophobia and bigotry. The groupthink of a bunch of almost-exclusively-male incels turned out to be hiding genuine misogyny once they had an enemy to point themselves at in gamergate.
Culture matters. Being an "open website" just describes how it happens, not why.
[deleted]
> It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
Isn't that hackernews
Isn't that hackernews
No hacker news is just reddit with a disdain for low effort jokes and a more technical/verbose focus. Most of the lame part of reddit culture is still here.
> > It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
It's just reddit for people who hate
It's just reddit for people who hate
Sure there is some of that, but there are people who hate on reddit too. Like reddit, there's also plenty of normal boards like origami, fitness, sports etc. It just gets associated with /pol/ which is a containment board for a reason.
I haven't been on there in a long time, but I remember it being really really hard to use, especially for newcomers. Tons of random crap, no ranking or voting system to bubble up things that are worth reading, lots of gore (and worse), inside jokes, spam. That's why people think of it as mysterious and inaccessible.
> I know there's very little expectations when it comes to reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common knowledge
To you and I, maybe! But even arstechnica's readership may not be aware of all this stuff.
To you and I, maybe! But even arstechnica's readership may not be aware of all this stuff.
Media reporting on anything involving 4chan has always been terrible. I remember a story about, I think, Emma Watson that turned out to be literally fake news - as in, it came from an already documented fake news site run by a known serial hoaxer, was laundered into legitimacy by increasingly reputable publications, and eventually ended up being reported as true everywhere including places like the BBC.
Media reporting on almost anything is terrible. It's only obvious when one be somewhat well-versed about the subject themselves.
Media reporting on internet communities, or places that I physically live in that I've seen are invariably very inaccurate.
Media reporting on internet communities, or places that I physically live in that I've seen are invariably very inaccurate.
Quality of reporting on arstechnica has notably gone down over the years, while bias has visibly gone up.
I think it's also worth adding that the memes didn't even really start on 4chan. They mostly started on ytmnd and then 4chans beta site started on servers that belonged to ytmnd/max. 4chan did however lower the bar to entry for sharing memes. Making gifs/mp3's for ytmnd was a put-off to many.
The only thing common about knowledge or sense is that most people don't have it
[deleted]
Because articles are meant to sell ads through sensationalism not to inform?
Propaganda to teach that anything free is dirty/salacious to keep people in their walled gardens.
Propaganda to teach that anything free is dirty/salacious to keep people in their walled gardens.
Needs moar yellow van https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128IR21ZQa0
Why do you think this is not relevant? Everything that came out of 4chan is not a surprise, it was accepted there from the very beginning. It just took proportions that nobody would expect.
The reason I think it isn't relevant is I think 4chan would be different if moot stuck around. moot had a sort of dictatorship power that allowed him to kill trends - for example GamerGate "died" on 4chan (leading to 8chan and friends) because moot decided one day that GamerGate was done on 4chan. I can't say for sure what 4chan would look like but I felt moot had a more tasteful and less ideological driven approach to running 4chan.
There was an article in Motherboard[1] how /pol/ is being idealogically driven due to moderation choices. I don't believe moot would have allowed such an ideologically driven moderation changes to continue for so long. (IIRC, moot had deleted /pol/ twice, once as /n/ which he removed for being too much like stormfront).
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7aap8/the-man-who-helped-tu...
There was an article in Motherboard[1] how /pol/ is being idealogically driven due to moderation choices. I don't believe moot would have allowed such an ideologically driven moderation changes to continue for so long. (IIRC, moot had deleted /pol/ twice, once as /n/ which he removed for being too much like stormfront).
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7aap8/the-man-who-helped-tu...
I meant the Anonymous group/movement/"which group?"/whatever debate is a bag of beans to be spilled another time.
Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me considering his entrepreneurial background, but I can’t deny I’ve also considered making the jump now and then from The dev life
> "Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me considering his entrepreneurial background (...)"
Yes. This is an extraordinary business case for strategic HCM discussions.
Yes. This is an extraordinary business case for strategic HCM discussions.
Only met him briefly and spent about an hour with him, but he left a huge impression. Great guy, and good luck to him on whatever's next!
I didn't even know moot was there to begin with.
he'd only been at Google for five years? seems like a lifetime ago!
It is amazing how consistently tech journalists manage to outdo mainstream journalists in incompetence and ill intent
I miss canv.as
canv.as always seemed like a great idea, ahead of its time, as far as letting people make memes easier... but now, flash forward to today, and original content on 4chan is at a proportional all-time low. users there always say things like "someone take this image and shop [x] in" instead of doing it themselves in mspaint.
Unfortunately, this happens in all kinds of communities, physical and digital. A place is hip because creative types concentrate there, contribute to each other, pushing each other's boundaries to create new things. Consumers notice these new things, come in to consume, but make no effort to contribute back to the community. The creatives eventually move on either because they've become unwelcome or realize they have not much new to learn, and the consumers are left behind wondering why their community doesn't feel hip any more.
I never try to take for granted when I'm involved in artists' spaces, FOSS projects, hacker spaces, etc. The point is to continue a cycle of learning and contributing back, not consume until all the resources are sucked dry...
I never try to take for granted when I'm involved in artists' spaces, FOSS projects, hacker spaces, etc. The point is to continue a cycle of learning and contributing back, not consume until all the resources are sucked dry...
Same. Managed to capture the creative aspects of 4chan meme culture without the toxicity. I loved creating memes there. I had a little following too. Then it died and it all went up in smoke and there's nowhere else like it.
Wonder what he'll do now.
On the one hand, no one would blame him for just continuing to drift off into obscurity. On the other, he's a smart guy, and smart guys tend to be restless. Add to this that the hurricane of anti-trust lawsuits happening right now may result in a re-shuffling of the deck when it comes to the landscape of the web in a few years, and there's some real potential for new projects on the world-wide information superhighway, in a way there hasn't been in some time.
On the one hand, no one would blame him for just continuing to drift off into obscurity. On the other, he's a smart guy, and smart guys tend to be restless. Add to this that the hurricane of anti-trust lawsuits happening right now may result in a re-shuffling of the deck when it comes to the landscape of the web in a few years, and there's some real potential for new projects on the world-wide information superhighway, in a way there hasn't been in some time.
Hey moot, we know you're reading this.
Just want to say you did a good job, thanks for being you and doing your thing. I know it's been tough and all, so thanks for the hard work.
Dunno about google maps though, that seemed to have taken a dive since ~2013. Maybe look into biotech and that jazz, it needs people like you.
Still, be good to see what you're doing next. Keep up that hard work and effort, it shows.
Just want to say you did a good job, thanks for being you and doing your thing. I know it's been tough and all, so thanks for the hard work.
Dunno about google maps though, that seemed to have taken a dive since ~2013. Maybe look into biotech and that jazz, it needs people like you.
Still, be good to see what you're doing next. Keep up that hard work and effort, it shows.
weird article, who cares? I care enough to point out the following:
like literally what is the point of this to lead people to talk about unrelated aspects of 4chan and maybe how that influenced his time at Google
but the article describes an extremely normal and extremely extended time at Google
what...?
like literally what is the point of this to lead people to talk about unrelated aspects of 4chan and maybe how that influenced his time at Google
but the article describes an extremely normal and extremely extended time at Google
what...?
[deleted]
The topic of him working at Google came up very recently. Is that why he’s leaving?
What did he actually do there?
"Google hired Poole in 2016 to work on the company's doomed social media project, Google+... After Google+, Poole apparently joined Google's experimental "Area 120" group and eventually moved on to be a product manager for Google Maps."
An uncharitable opinion might be that Google hired someone with previous social media experience in a last ditch effort to figure out a way to make Google+ a success.
How's that uncharitable? That's probably why the hired him.
It paints a picture of a panicked Google exec going "oh shit G+ is swirling the drain, is there anybody at all with successful social media experience that can save it?"
Then they hire the first guy they find, even though his site and G+ are almost polar opposites. G+ fails shortly afterward.
Not exactly a fair assessment of the situation.
Then they hire the first guy they find, even though his site and G+ are almost polar opposites. G+ fails shortly afterward.
Not exactly a fair assessment of the situation.
Are we talking about being unfair to moot or Google?
M00t did have a greatly contrasting view to The Zuck. The Zuck -- one identity, one you. M00t talked about "facets," a face you show, just one plane out of the multihedron of You. It's a bit more than Billy Joel's "The Stranger," is the "you" that you bring to work, or maybe just the one you show your boss. The Zuck just had everything all out there for everyone. M00t's insight is that people really really did not want to do that, everything from your personal political leanings to not wanting your grandmother to know about your fursona.
It is a smart hire in that aspect, but Google+ was going to be an also-ran and I don't think M00t alone could save it.
It is a smart hire in that aspect, but Google+ was going to be an also-ran and I don't think M00t alone could save it.
I guess Google+'s "circles" concept would be helpful in maintaining different facets, but ultimately all social media is public so that's kind of a silly thing to even try to do.
If you don't want your wild Fursona to be associated with the same account that you use for your highly conservative church groups then putting them on the same account is not a good idea.
If you don't want your wild Fursona to be associated with the same account that you use for your highly conservative church groups then putting them on the same account is not a good idea.
I loved the Google+ philosophy, but it's gone...
[deleted]
4chan probably largely got so popular because it was the first English language image board, not because of a good idea.
It was really just copied from a formula that was long popular in Japan, and being the first it became the biggest.
An interesting matter is that Lainchan follows largely the same formula and is very civil in comparison, despite not enforcing it, perhaps because it's main focus is technology and not entertainment.
It was really just copied from a formula that was long popular in Japan, and being the first it became the biggest.
An interesting matter is that Lainchan follows largely the same formula and is very civil in comparison, despite not enforcing it, perhaps because it's main focus is technology and not entertainment.
PM for google maps
seems like, initially, they hoped he'd help make Google+ the Next Big Thing
What will be left for Google?
“ Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his five years.”
Lol such a dishonest representation of FANG employment. Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff, and about average in terms of team switches
Lol such a dishonest representation of FANG employment. Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff, and about average in terms of team switches
5 years at Google is forever, and it's not uncommon at all for people to jump around projects at the company. It's also a full year beyond what's necessary to vest. Really silly way to write that.
European here - what's it mean to vest shares? It sounds like some sort of stock options became unlocked? I haven't heard of this thing before, just of stocks being part of salary for small startups that don't have actual money to pay you (or at least, that's what I've heard warnings for on HN).
Yep - your options trickle in over a vesting period.
Typically there’s also a ‘Cliff’ at the start - a period during which no options are available to you.
addendum: the ‘standard’ Silicon Valley stock option deal is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff.
Eg: first 12 months, no options
Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to you
Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly cadence
The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
Typically there’s also a ‘Cliff’ at the start - a period during which no options are available to you.
addendum: the ‘standard’ Silicon Valley stock option deal is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff.
Eg: first 12 months, no options
Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to you
Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly cadence
The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
Worth noting that Google and Facebook no longer have a cliff, and Google has also started experimenting with frontloading your initial vest (something like 40/30/20/10) to avoid the "dreaded" fifth year drop.
Yep you got it. Usually you vest 25% of your hiring offer per year, so after four years you’re fully vested. Some companies skew it towards later in the four year period to keep folks from jumping ship after the first payout (“golden handcuffs”). I’ve seen Amazon’s stock vesting schedule set at 5-15-40-40.
Big corps pay RSUs as part of your compensation package.
This helps them reduce compensation during hard times. Salaries are very sticky; it’s hard to cut salaries. So they offer RSU comp because it’s tied to stock price. When the company is doing poorly, they can pay less. But it also lets the pay high compensation and retain long term talent.
This helps them reduce compensation during hard times. Salaries are very sticky; it’s hard to cut salaries. So they offer RSU comp because it’s tied to stock price. When the company is doing poorly, they can pay less. But it also lets the pay high compensation and retain long term talent.
depends, for a public company like google when you get hired in addition to base salary you may get a yearly bonus and also RSUs which are free google shares, dispersed evenly over 4 years. When you get to year 1 at the company you get the first years shares(1 year vested) deposited in your brokerage account, and then they "vest" and are given to you on a quarterly cadence until the 4 years are up(if you are employed the entire time).
In addition to the initial grant at year 2 during your review some employees get more shares on top of the initial grant(that vest over a certain time frame, usually 2-4 years), these are called stacking RSU grants and its why people stay at FANG companies a long time as these grants stack higher and higher all the while your career progresses and the company stock goes higher.
In addition to the initial grant at year 2 during your review some employees get more shares on top of the initial grant(that vest over a certain time frame, usually 2-4 years), these are called stacking RSU grants and its why people stay at FANG companies a long time as these grants stack higher and higher all the while your career progresses and the company stock goes higher.
That was from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-.... We've since changed the URL - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26916649
That spin had so much torque I'm surprised the article stayed motionless.
That spin had so much torque I'm surprised the article stayed motionless.
> Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff
This is sort of misleading. The 2 year quote often thrown around is a measure of the average tenure of current employees at the company, not a measure of the average tenure of people leaving.
I like to note that a company with exponential growth (and all of the major tech firms, excepting perhaps microsoft since it's been around longer count here) can have a seemingly low tenure by that first metric even if no one has ever left the company.
This is sort of misleading. The 2 year quote often thrown around is a measure of the average tenure of current employees at the company, not a measure of the average tenure of people leaving.
I like to note that a company with exponential growth (and all of the major tech firms, excepting perhaps microsoft since it's been around longer count here) can have a seemingly low tenure by that first metric even if no one has ever left the company.
russdpale(6)
Crazy that he is 'Google caliber'. Kinda reduces the allure of the Googler tbh
How he avoid cancel culture is beyond me
How he avoid cancel culture is beyond me
During the Q&A, Poole answered a question from one of the masked employees. After his answer, he asked, "Did that help, Steve?" Shocked, and no doubt a bit intimidated, the employee asked how Poole knew his name. His answer: "Well, I read your name on the badge clipped to your belt."
Poole was smart and thoughtful and I was quite impressed (not just with his eye for detail). Not surprised he lasted so long at Google.